Kathleen McGurl Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Kathleen McGurl is a sagas and historical fiction author from Bournemouth. She started her writing career creating short stories that she published in women’s magazines in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Over the years, she got interested in family history research, which is what resulted in works with genealogy themes. She has said that she has always had a fascination with how the past influences the present and explores these links in her works.

While she is married to an Irish husband, she has lived in the United Kingdom for the longest time. They have a large beach house a few meters from the best beaches in Britain. In fact, one of the houses in her novel is inspired by her house.

Since she is not yet a full-time author, Kathleen works a day job at a large UK retail company where she does IT. However, she does much of her work from home which means that she has a few hours every day for writing, as she does not have a morning or evening commute.

When she has some free time, she can often be found swimming or running.

McGurl has always been an avid reader ever since she was a child. In fact, her mother often boasts of how she taught herself to read before she was even in school. She became one of those kids that hid their novels under the covers to read by torchlight.

However, it took quite a while and it was not until she was in her thirties that she started writing. Kathleen sat down and began writing short stories that would be quite successful.

They would end up being published in several women’s magazines in Australia and the UK that she thought why not try her hand at writing long-form fiction.
She published her debut novel “Mr. Cavell’s Diamond” in 2014 and has become quite a prolific author. She now has more than a dozen novels to her name and is showing no signs of slowing down.

Her training all those years has certainly paid off as she became a full-time novelist since 2019 when she quit her day job.

Kathleen McGurl loves reading dual timeline, timeslip, and historical fiction. Some of her favorite authors include Katherine Webb and Kate Morton. In recent times, she has been reading the wonderful Tudor timeslips by Pamela Hartshorne.

As for her novels, she writes writing novels with a genealogy angle. Kathleen loves to write the type of work she loves to read and hence when she got fascinated with family tree research she had to incorporate that into her work.

While she has become a very successful author her journey to publication was not that easy. Kathleen believed she had her break at the 2013 Winchester Writers’ Festival when she met some agents from The Emerald Comb. However, nothing could come from that, and in 2014 she went to Carina in the United Kingdom to try her luck.

She had read and been impressed by some of the works Carina published. The most surreal moment was when she went to a Romantic Novelists’ Association event and started talking to an editor from the publishing house.

It turned out that she had read his manuscript that very morning. Hardly a fortnight later he was offered a two-book deal.

“The Girl from Ballymor” by Kathleen McGurl is a tragic yet wonderfully written story that tells the stories of two women and their families.
The dual timeline story alternates between the story of an Irish woman set in the 1840s and that of Maria McCarthy a present-day woman researching renowned 19century artist Michael McCarthy who happens to be her ancestor.

Kitty and Patrick her husband are struggling to survive as Kildoolin their small village is hit by the Irish potato famine. Things only get worse as Patrick dies in a mining accident and Kitty also loses her three children who starve to death.

She is struggling to survive amid starvation and extreme poverty even as the blight continues to ravage Cork County.

In the present day world, Maria finds herself pregnant by Dan her boyfriend even as she tries to sort out her feelings about motherhood given that her mother was always aloof and distant.

Sweeping its readers from modern-day Ireland to the 19th century, it is a very beautifully written story.

Kathleen McGurl’s novel “The Forgotten Secret” is the story of Ellen O’Brien that just got employment working at the Carlton House as a maid to Madame Emily Carlton.

Her father is happy that she now can bring home some bread and the future is looking very bright. Things are only made better by the fact that her boyfriend James Gallagher is back in town and their love could not be stronger.

But war is about to break out and there is a lot of secret and hushed talk about Irish independence. In the meantime, The Tans and Black are prowling the county and people have gone into hiding while some have had their property damaged with others getting arrested.

Fast forward a hundred years in the future, Clare Farrell is the heir to Clonamurty an old rundown farmhouse in the county.

She is married to Paul a controlling man who wants to sell the property and invest the proceeds. He is so egotistical that he does not notice that his wife is unhappy and this could be the last straw that could make her leave him.

Her sons Jon and Matt are supporting their mother and want her to be financially independent and happy.

Paul does not take well to being left by his wife but she is excited to start a brand new life in Ireland. She intends to clean and completely refurbish the outbuildings and main house.

Things get really interesting when she stumbles upon a communion medal and birth certificate stashed in an old armchair. All she now wants is to resolve a century-old mystery.

“The Emerald Comb” by Kathleen McGurl asserts that some secrets should be left buried. For Katie, research into her family tree was something of a hobby until she stepped into the ivy-strewn driveway of the sprawling Kingsley’s House.

It may be an ancient house desperately needing some repairs but it once belonged to the opulent and intimidating St Clair family who are Katie’s forbears. Two centuries since the St Clairs lived in the house, Katie feels some strange nostalgia and when the old house is put up for sale, she is determined to convince her family to buy it.

All around her are mysteries of the past and she soon becomes obsessed with searching through history to find the truth about her roots. But she soon finds out that the walls have been hiding some dark secrets.

When hidden betrayals and forgotten stories come to light, the past could not have come more alive.