Una Mannion Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Una Mannion is a mystery and literary fiction novelist from Philadelphia who is best known for her novels Tell Me What I Am and A Crooked Tree. Her novels have been described as haunting psychological thrillers which Chris Whitaker and Marian Keyes called moving, poignant, and sharp. While she was born in Philadelphia she moved to Co Sligo with her husband during the 1990s after a childhood and young adulthood spent in Strandhill, her father’s hometown. Given that she has lived in both places, she has developed a nostalgic and wistful love affair that continues to this day. This love for both places she calls home is evident in her work. However, Una insists that the love and appreciation for writers and writing in Ireland is what drove her to become an author. Unlike other novelists who took several years to get their works published, she had two bestsellers in two years and her debut won the Kate O’Brien Award in 2022.

It was during the 1950s that Una Mannion’s father but he never settled either in the United States or in Ireland. During much of his life, he loved to travel back home several times each year and only gained American citizenship at the end of his life. Growing up, Una loved the continuity and stability of her father’s family home where cousins and aunts all loved together. She never liked how the United States had neighborhoods experienced rapid change and people moved around all the time. As such, she still struggles with the same issue of not knowing which side of the Atlantic to call home just like her father did.

As a teenager, Una went to the Villanova-based Notre Dame Academy and then headed to Sewanee and the University of the South to study English. Thereafter, she moved back to Philadelphia and went to Temple University for her Masters in English. Things started happening in 2014 when she joined the Co Sligo-based Sandy Field Writers’ group. She would then begin participating in story writing contests and soon enough, she started getting shortlisted and winning. It was at one of these contests that she met Sinead Gleeson who was working as a judge. Sinead introduced her to a London-based agent who she still works with.

Apart from her novels, Una Mannion is also involved in education and administration. She chairs the BA Writing and Literature program and also lectures in performing arts at IT Sligo. In recent times she has gone into poetry too and Crouched Burial her poem was the winner of the Seamus Heaney Memorial Poetry Prize by Yeats Society which was judged by Paula Meehan. In 2015, Mannion came in second at the Dromineer Literary Festival for flash fiction. Una made the list of shortlisted writers in the Listowel Writers Week Originals Short Stories. She also made the shortlist for the Bridport and the Fish Memoir Competition among many others. She was the winner of the Cuirt New Writing Prize in Fiction in 2017 and earlier on in 2016 Frozen Planet her short story won the Bare Fiction Prize for Flash Fiction. Una’s work has been published in the likes of Ambit, The Incubator, and the Irish Times among many other publications. She currently makes her home in Sligo where she lives with her husband and children.

Una Mannion’s novel A Crooked Tree is an interesting coming-of-age story that tells the story of Libby a fifteen-year-old girl. At the start of the story, Libby tells the story of Ellen who is ejected from their mother’s car at dusk five miles from home. The mother heads home leaving the twelve-year-old Ellen all alone in the dark in her Catholic School uniform. Her mother is not the most stable and frequently leaves the children alone. Eventually, Ellen is picked up by a stranger but has to throw herself out of the car as the driver begins giving creepy vibes. Moreover, she did not want her mother to know that she was hitchhiking since she would have blamed her if anything went wrong. It is thus a story of uncertainty particularly for the children. Even though Libby is a mature 15-year-old, she is never sure of who she can trust or what she can discuss with adults. As a teenager, she is afraid of authority just like most girls her age. All in all, it is all about Libby and her relationship with her siblings and her mother at a time when kids had few if any freedoms. As a coming-of-age story, it is all too familiar to anyone who remembers those years when they used to be confused, frustrated, lacking in confidence, and uneasy.

Una Mannion’s Tell Me What I Am is another fascinating story that she published in 2023. This is a story that follows Nessa and Ruby who are two women who are related to Deena Garvey who mysteriously went missing a few years back. Since Deena was her sister, Nessa spends much of her life searching for her as she is convinced that her sister would have never walked out on Ruby her daughter. She also believes that Lucas her estranged partner had something to do with her disappearance. Ruby has long since forgotten her mother and her father never talks about her which has made Ruby believe that her mother had abandoned them. As she enters her teenage years, she begins to wonder about her mother and whether her father had anything to do with her mysterious disappearance. She does not even know that her mother has a sister named Nessa. As Ruby explores the wilds of Vermont, Una Mannon transports you to the place with very visual descriptions of her adventures in the outdoors. Meanwhile, Nessa is always getting frustrated with Lucas and hates that she cannot see her niece and explain things to her. It is a brilliant story of a family torn apart, struggling with control, power, identity, and thoughts of what could have been if one of their most beloved members had not gone missing under mysterious circumstances.