Lean Cullinan grew up in a distinguished literary family and has been writing since childhood. She is a graduate of the MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin and sings in one of Ireland's finest choirs. She lives in Dublin with one husband and two sons.

Recently graduated and nursing a wounded heart, Cate Houlihan is quickly learning about the realities of adult life - shaky career paths, broken relationships and overbearing parents. Determined not to repeat past mistakes, Cate throws herself into choir practice and her new job as an editorial assistant in a small and eccentric Dublin publishing house. When romance blossoms with the choir's newest member, Matthew Taylor, it seems as if things might be starting to go Cate's way. Newly arrived from England, Matthew is charming, handsome and a talented tenor. Cate is smitten. So when her work brings her into contact with the recent Republican past, Cate dismisses as paranoia her sense that she is being followed - until she comes home one evening to find someone has been in her flat. And that they haven't stolen a thing. As her relations with Matthew begin to blow hot and cold, and her family try and fail to put on a united front when something is obviously wrong, Cate senses that she is once again misreading situations. As the tension escalates Cate realises that maybe she's not as far off the mark as she might have hoped: the past is not as distant as she'd believed, with danger much closer to home than she could ever imagine.

An atmospheric and suspenseful debut set in contemporary Dublin, offering a gripping portrait of the first generation to come of age in Ireland's flimsy peacetime, where the ghosts of the past are all too close to home. When her work as an editorial assistant brings her into contact with the recent Republican past, Cate gets the sense she's being followed.