Liz Nugent

Liz Nugent Bio I wrote:

Liz Nugent was born in 1967 in Dublin. She’s written successfully for radio drama, television plays, soap opera, short stories, and animation for kids.

She went to Holy Child Killiney, in County Dublin. When she was six she suffered a brain injury that left her with dystonia. After she left school she moved to London for a bit.

After she returned to Ireland, she enrolled in an acting class at the Gaiety School of Acting, however she quickly switched to stage management. She toured the world with Riverdance as the stage manager and would later work in an administration role in RTE on it flagship soap Fair City.

While she was at RTE she was commissioned to write an animation series for Irish language TV station TG4 and she also penned a full length radio play for them. Liz subsequently won a European Broadcasting Union competition for a TV pilot.

Liz’s first novel started life as “Alice”, a short story, which made the shortlist of the RTE Francis McManus Short Story Competition in 2006. Further exploration of this main character produced “Unraveling Oliver”, her debut novel.

After she wrote the story would not leave her alone and demanded to be heard, so (just to shut them up) she wrote another two chapters. Life got in the way so it ended up being two years before she returned to this manuscript. Staying in a chateau in France was something she was able to use in telling this story.

It was inspired by two books that she read around the same time: “Engleby” by Sebastian Faulks and “The Book of Evidence” by John Banville. Each book was written from the perspective of a male sociopath and Liz found she was really drawn in and fascinated by these characters. She decided that if she ever wrote a novel, it’d be about a deeply flawed man and eventually that is what she did.

“Unraveling Oliver” won the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Book Awards and got long listed for the International Dublin Literature Prize. Liz also won the first Jack Harte Bursary provided by the Irish Writers Centre and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in 2014. “Lying in Wait” won the Monaco Bursary from the Ireland Funds, and was Writer in Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in 2016. The novel also won the prestigious RTE Ryan Tubridy Listener’s Choice prize at the Irish Book Awards and the Crime Novel of the Year.

In 2017 she won the Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Award in Literature. She was presented with the James Joyce Medal for Literature and was a Guest of Honour at Iceland Noir.

“Unraveling Oliver” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2014. Oliver Ryan (successful, handsome, and charismatic) has been married to Alice (his devoted wife) for a long time. Together, they illustrate and write these award winning children’s books. Their life together is one of enviable ease and privilege, until, this one evening after a delightful dinner, Oliver delivers such a blow to Alice that it renders her unconscious, and he subsequently beats her into a coma.

While Alice is hovering on the brink of life and death, in the aftermath of a most unthinkable event, the couple’s acquaintances, neighbors and friends all attempt to comprehend what could have pushed Oliver to have committed such a horrific act. While his story continues to unfold, layers get peeled away to reveal a life of deception, shame, envy, and masterful manipulation.

“Lying in Wait” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2016. Lydia Fitzsimons has got the perfect life: wife of a successful and respected judge, mom to a beloved son, and mistress of this gorgeous house in Dublin. This beautiful house, however, holds quite the secret.

And when Laurence, Lydia’s son, learns its secret, wheels get set in motion which lead to an increasingly devastatingly dark and claustrophobic climax.

A Dublin family whose twisted relationships and dark secrets suddenly get revealed.

“Skin Deep” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2018. Cordelia Russell has been living on the French Riviera for twenty-five years now, passing herself off as an English socialite. However her luck, as well as the kindness of strangers, have all run out.

A visitor’s arrival from her distant past shocks Cordelia. She reacts violently to such an intrusion and flees back to her flat in order to spend a drunken night at some glittering party. While dawn breaks she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she is able to open her door she is able to hear the flies buzzing around. She never expected the corpse inside her flat to begin decomposing quite this fast.

“Little Cruelties” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in 2020. Three brothers are attending this funeral. One lies in the coffin.

Luke, Will, and Brian grew up competing for their mom’s unequal love. Now that they are men, this competition continues—for status, women, fame, and money.

They all betray one another, again and again, until one of them gets murdered. However which one is it?

“Strange Sally Diamond” is the fifth stand alone novel and was released in 2023. A wickedly twisted, dark, and brilliantly observed new book about an enigmatic woman that is confronting her unknown past.

Sally Diamond, a recluse, causes some outrage by attempting to incinerate her deceased dad. Now she is the center of attention, not just from the hungry media and police detectives, however also this sinister voice from a past that she does not even remember. While she starts to learn the horrors of her early childhood, she steps into this world for the very first time, making big decisions, new friends, and discovering that people do not always mean exactly what they say.

However who is the guy that observes Sally from the other side of the world, and why does he refer to her as Mary? Why does her new neighbor appear to be obsessed with her? Her trust issues will soon be severely challenged in this bold, inventive, and addictive thriller.