'As worlds collide, a gripping story of belonging, identity, memory, culpability and forgiveness unfolds, creating a poignant and profound novel for our times.' Deborah AndrewsTheo, a young Rwandan refugee fleeing his country’s genocide, arrives in Dublin, penniless, alone and afraid. Still haunted by a traumatic memory in which his father committed a murderous act of violence, he struggles to find his place in the foreign city.Plagued by his past, Theo is gradually drawn deeper into the world of Dublin’s feared criminal gangs, plagued by racism, fear and drugs. But a chance encounter in a restaurant with Deirdre offers him a lifeline.Joined together through survival instincts Theo and Deirdre’s tender friendship is however soon threatened by tragedy. Can they confront their addictions to carve a future out of the catastrophe that engulfs both their lives?Clar expertly aligns countries and cultures in this spellbinding and tough novel. Drawing on authentic inspiration the tumultuous settings come alive as you are drawn into the multi-faceted lives of Theo and Deirdre.What Reviewers and Readers Say:'Clar's book is a gripping thriller which manages to bring two very different worlds into synergy. She succeeds in creating a truly three dimensional African protagonist - a rare thing in popular fiction - helping us to feel both compassion and frustration at Theo's choices.' Celeste Hicks'A fast-paced, powerful and emotional novel deftly crafted and shot through with insight, empathy and poetic beauty. As worlds collide, a gripping story of belonging, identity, memory, culpability and forgiveness unfolds, creating a poignant and profound novel for our times'. Deborah Andrews, author of 'Walking the Lights''Powerful, thought-provoking, and at times horrifying; yet also a compelling story of friendship against all the odds.' Nick Brownlee'Sex, drugs and....Irish poetry meets deep Africa in the most unusual of settings. This visceral novel's imagery will stay with you for a while.' Rosie Garthwaite'With the same assured touch that we saw in her debut novel, Clár Ní Chonghaile here weaves a vivid, moving but never sentimental tale, with deft characterisation, luminous detail and generous flashes of humour. From the very first page I knew I was in good hands.' Léan Cullinan, author of 'The Living''It is undoubtedly a clever novel, a novel that explains much while keeping forward momentum.' Joules Barham, Northern Reader'Rain falling on everyone suggests that death and misfortune are indiscriminate but it is how we deal with the vagaries of nature and life that gives the individual hope and control over their future.' Rich Jones, Rich Reviews'Rain Falls On Everyone was a unique and deeply touching novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.' Pages and Print'This is such an impressive book... It was a pleasure to read and can highly recommend it!' Butterfly in the Sky

CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA, OCTOBER 1970 - On a chilly autumn night in this chic and cultured Southern university town, two teenaged girls named Mary Jane Mears and Jeannie Arnold are brutally raped and murdered. The killers are never caught or identified, and over the years the case is buried in musty files in police basements. CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA, OCTOBER 1996 - Twenty-six years later, autumn returns to Carolina. So does Matt Redmond, a hardened and embittered veteran DEA agent who has left his career in Washington and come home to solve the killing of the two girls, one of them his high school sweetheart. In an ironic twist, Matt's pursuit of the secret of his first love's death brings him another. A proud and struggling single mother, Heather Lindstrom, comes to share his passion for truth and justice for the victims. But there is danger in disturbing the skeletons in Chapel Hill's academic closet, for behind the horrific 1970 slayings lies one of the dirtiest and most dangerous secrets of the Vietnam protest era. The most powerful men and women in the land want Matt Redmond off this case, and they will do whatever is necessary to stop him, including murder. The price Matt and Heather pay for the truth may be their own lives.

CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. "There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was, I've got to survive this, and at the same time, I've got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now." In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history "right here and now." We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu's cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: "I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn't hearing clearly") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof ("I remember when the bird ascended," says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, "It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence"). Touching, heroic, harrowing, and utterly unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. "It was like being at Waterloo," concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. "It was so important, so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam....Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that--as important as Vietnam."

Martin Mynhardt seems invincible. Violence surrounds him, yet he remains unscathed: a woman asks him the time, then leaps in front of a train; after a mine riot, he watches hoses sweep scattered body parts off the floor. Just before the shocking violence that brings South African apartheid to an end, Martin decides to return to the family farm for a weekend. A highly successful businessman and Afrikaans Nationalist, he hopes to sell the property to the government in a deal both highly profitable and corrupt. The moment he steps onto the farm, his plans are derailed. The repercussions of a society's endemic violence catch up to him, and shake the relationships that frame his life. His closest friend, a brilliant, idealistic lawyer, is sentenced to prison for his anti-apartheid "terrorist" activities — in part because Martin refused to help him. His son, recently returned from the Angolan war, is in silent revolt against the values of his father and his nation. His mistress, Bea, an intelligent, strong-willed woman who offers Martin the hope of redemption through her own capacity for empathy, is also caught up in the gathering political storm. This is Andre Brink's story of a society on the edge of collapse, spurred to profound self realization.

At fifty, Alix Kates Shulman left a city life dense with political activism, family, and literary community, and went to stay alone in a small cabin on an island off the Maine coast.