Mary Stanley: A brand new author on Entice

A brand new author on Entice, Mary Stanley writes beautiful, compelling romances set in her native Ireland. With five new ebooks available this month, there’s never been a better time to fall in love with Mary Stanley’s writing.

Too often we find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, forgetting all the times that we were in the right place with the right things happening.  Sometimes ordinary lives get turned upside down by events over which we have no control.  

I began writing my first novel when I was forty-eight; my marriage had ended suddenly, and I had time to do something for me but I had no idea what that might be.  I was alone for the first time in my life, and I was afraid.  I started writing Retreat, a novel about Irish schoolgirls in a convent. I can see now that it was a form of therapy as I immersed myself in their lives, revisiting past memories, and a story unfolded that is very loosely based on my childhood and school.

I never intended for that novel to end. I thought I would just keep writing about those girls, but one day it came to its natural conclusion, and it was only then I thought about seeing if it might be published.  I was incredibly lucky as four different publishers were interested and an agent approached me.  Contracts were signed and suddenly a door opened and I had a purpose.  I started the next novel Missing, but it was only after my fourth novel was published that I had the confidence to use the word ‘writer’ to describe myself.

I use my years living abroad as a backdrop, drawing on what I know and exploring life through my characters and their relationships.

I am interested in a wide variety of themes but that of survival absorbs me the most. I am intrigued by coincidence and by the frailties and strengths in human beings, how family, love, friendship and laughter carry us.  I write about ordinary people and I explore the darkness in human nature as my characters embark on their various journeys.

Retreat is about a convent retreat; Missing is about a daughter who disappears one night; Revenge is about an assault and the effect is has both on the victim and on her family; Searching for Home deals with displacement after a German plane flew off course during the Second World War and crashed in the mountains south of Dublin; The Lost Garden is about a woman with something locked in her memory that blocks her ability to maintain relationships; ordinary people with seemingly ordinary lives and then events happen over which they have no control.

Find out more about Mary Stanley at www.marystanley.com.