What Walked the Boreen
After a humiliating divorce and the death of her mother, Ria Brennan arrives in rural Ireland to claim Blackpool House, an inherited farmhouse overlooking the Dingle coast. She expects isolation, hard work, and perhaps a chance to begin again. Instead, she finds a village already watching her—and an old warning waiting at the roadside. They call her the Woman in Black: a lantern-bearing figure said to haunt the boreen near Ria’s new home. When Calista, a local young woman, disappears and is found dead beneath the cliffs, the village reaches instinctively for the legend. But Garda officer Sean Kelleher, Ria’s childhood acquaintance, refuses to blame folklore for what looks increasingly like murder. As more villagers vanish or die under suspicious circumstances, Ria uncovers a decades-old disappearance tied to Blackpool House, sealed court records, missing research, and a secret protected by some of the village’s most respected families. The newer name whispered through the community—the Walker—may be nothing more than a modern disguise for the same old silence. With cryptic objects appearing on her property, someone breaking into her home, and an unseen figure moving along the boreen after dark, Ria must decide whether she is investigating a legend—or being drawn into one. The closer she comes to the truth, the more dangerous the village becomes, and the more she must question the charming woman who seems determined to help her because some stories are invented to conceal a crime. And some people will kill to keep them alive.

Note: The Hare’s Wound and Grey Castle follow different characters but remain on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. The Blackwater Murders is an atmospheric mystery series inspired by folklore and the dark histories carried by isolated places. Each novel draws on a different legend, where old beliefs become entangled with modern crimes and the landscape itself seems to remember what happened there. Behind every haunting story lies a human secret—and sometimes the legend is the perfect place to hide it.