Morag Prunty (London reared of Irish parents Kate Kerrigan) worked in London before moving to Ireland in 1990. She is now a full-time writer and lives in County Mayo with her husband and son. She is the author of Recipes for a Perfect Marriage which was shortlisted for the 2006 Romantic Novel of the Year Award.

Successful New York food writer Tressa Nolan has a great life - wonderful friends, a gorgeous apartment, and of course fabulous food - but the idea of turning forty alone scares her, so she marries the next man who asks: Dan, her building's super. He's handsome and he adores her, but soon after the wedding Tressa regrets her decision. Everything from Dan's unsophisticated interests to his enormous (and intrusive) Irish-American family sets her teeth on edge. Why couldn't she have the perfect marriage her grandparents had? What Tressa doesn't know - what she only discovers when she reads her Grandma Bernadine's journal-cum-recipe book - is that she's following in Bernadine's footsteps, and like all the best recipes, a perfect marriage calls for a long, slow simmer.