Skip to main content

Emma Donoghue

Biography

Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in 18th-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays, as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (THE WONDER, FROG MUSIC, SLAMMERKIN, LIFE MASK, THE SEALED LETTER) to the contemporary (STIR-FRY, HOOD, LANDING). Her international bestseller ROOM was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth and Orange Prizes.

Emma Donoghue

Books by Emma Donoghue

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Romance

Drawing on years of investigation and Anne Lister’s five-million-word secret journal, LEARNED BY HEART is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy. Eliza and Anne meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both 14.

by Emma Donoghue - Adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction

In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks --- young Trian and old Cormac --- he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease in 1918, nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

written by Emma Donoghue, read by Emma Lowe - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease in 1918, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction

Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an 11-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Thriller, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Tourists flock to the cabin of 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. Written with all the propulsive tension that made ROOM a huge bestseller, THE WONDER works beautifully on many levels --- a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

In the summer of 1876, San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice --- if he doesn't track her down first.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Short Stories

The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders, too: those of race, law, sex and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

written by Emma Donoghue, read by Michal Friedman, Ellen Archer, Suzanne Toren and Robert Petkoff - Fiction

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.