Thurles author set to release latest book in her series described as the 'Irish Downton Abbey'

Thurles author Susie Murphy will this week publish 'A Class Liberated', the seventh book in her hugely popular historical fiction series A Matter of Class.

Releasing worldwide on 31st May 2025, A Class Liberated continues the sweeping historical saga that began with A Class Apart.

Set in Ireland, England and America in the 19th century, the series spans more than two decades and two family generations. Tenant unrest and Catholic-Protestant tensions form the background to a love story across the class divide between Bridget and Cormac, a landowner’s daughter and a stable hand’s son.

Susie’s A Matter of Class series has achieved acclaim from the Historical Novel Society which selected her third book, A Class Forsaken, as an Editors’ Choice in spring 2021. Her first book, A Class Apart, was shortlisted in the final five in the fiction category of the Carousel Aware Prize for Independently Published Authors in November 2023.

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Described by readers as ‘the Irish Downton Abbey’, the series is available in ebook, paperback and audio. Susie has established her own online bookstore, where readers can purchase copies directly at www.susiemurphywrites.com. Paperbacks are also available in Bookworm Bookshop in Thurles and online from Thebookshop.ie, as well as through Thurles Library.

Known locally as Susan Bourke, Susie attended the Ursuline Secondary School in Thurles from 1999 to 2005 and taught piano at St Angela’s Academy of Music from 2009 to 2018.

She has at least two more books planned in her A Matter of Class series.

Susie's books have received a combined 11,678 reviews on popular book logging site goodreads with an average rating of 4.49/5 across all her novels so far so it's safe to assume this next instalment in the series will be one to snap up quickly!