Graham Norton

Read by Marian Keyes and featuring an exclusive Q&A between Graham Norton and Marian Keyes.

Twenty-five years after the iconic, 1.5 million-copy bestseller Rachel's Holiday burst into our lives, Rachel's BACK!

Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess.

But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers.

But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles.

She'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change?

Is it time to think again, Rachel?

Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer.

When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents.

Carol's mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won't see her daughter suffer in this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan's past,  and strange rumours that were never confronted...

Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage - after all, life had already judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before.

Then Damian, a young Irish carer, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.

Travelling from post-war Ireland to 1960s New York - a city full of art, larger than life characters and turmoil - Frankie shares a world in which friendship and chance encounters collide.

The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama; and yet its inhabitants are troubled. So when human remains are discovered on an old farm, the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated police sergeant, PJ Collins, struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regret.

It is 1987, and a small Irish community is preparing for the wedding of two of its young inhabitants. They're barely adults, not so long out of school and still part of the same set of friends they've grown up with. As the friends head home from the beach that last night before the wedding, there is a car accident. Three survive the crash, but three are killed. And the reverberations are felt throughout the small town. Connor, the young driver of the car, lives. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame and so he leaves the only place he knows for another life. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, by the noughties he has made a home - of sorts - for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life. But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to meet his past.

Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother's death, intent on wrapping up that dismal part of her life. And perhaps, had she not found the small stash of letters, the truth would never have come to light. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house. As she hurries further into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea, she has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on.

‘It seems to me that we are all made up of the things we adore…’ In his new autobiography, written with characteristic humour and often outrageous candour, Graham shows that life is more than just a series of dates and it's really the things you love that make you who you are. From his beloved dogs to his rediscovered love of Ireland, the men Graham has loved and lost, to his love affair with New York. He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings.

Helen is a retired teacher living on the Irish coast. She enjoys the peace and quiet - despite the burden of Margaret, her unpleasant sister. Margaret arrived three years ago for a short holiday, but somehow managed to stay and worm her way into Helen's life. 

One day, Helen sees a man struggling in the sea and decides to investigate. She doesn't quite know what it is, but something about it feels very strange...