The Empty Room Paperback - 2024

From the rear cover

What do you do when your child disappears?

Pandora - Dora - Condren wakes one morning to discover her 17-year old daughter Ellie, has not come home after a party.

The day Ellie disappears, Dora is alone as her husband Eamon has already left for the day in his job as a long-distance lorry driver. So Dora does the usual things: rings around Ellie's friends... but no one knows where she is. Her panic growing, Dora tries the local hospitals and art college where Ellie is a student - but then the police arrive on her doorstep with the news her daughter's handbag has been discovered dumped in a layby.

So begins Dora's ordeal of waiting and not knowing what has become of her girl. Eamon's lack of empathy and concern, Dora realises, is indicative of the state of their marriage, and left on her own, Dora begins to reassess everything she thought she knew about her family and her life. Increasingly isolated and disillusioned with the police investigation, Dora feels her grip on reality slipping as she takes it upon herself to find her daughter - even if it means tearing apart everything and everybody she had ever loved, and taking justice into her own hands.

'The tension and heartbreak kept me turning the pages' Patricia Gibney