Literary Criticism/essays
Finally, it really is imminent. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature Volumes IV and V; Irish Women's Writing and Traditions (Cork University Press) will be one of the main events of the Irish publishing year. It is due in the autumn and the territory is no less than the period from 600 AD to the end of the 20th century. Editors involved include Angela Bourke, Margaret Mac Curtain and Mβir∅N∅ Dhonnchadha and it is interdisciplinary, with texts covering every field from literature and journalism to law and medicines. Philosopher Alain de Botton examines our eternal desire to be elsewhere in The Art of Travel (Hamish Hamilton). Challenging thinker Jean Baudrillard meditates on mad cows, genetic cloning, Holocaust revisionism and other diverse topics in Total Screen (Verso). Julian Barnes's essays over 20 years are collected in Something to Declare; French Essays (Picador). Colm T≤ib∅n writes about artists and writers over the last 200 years whose work was publicly lauded but whose private lives and sexuality were subverted, and how society has reconciled the two, in Love in a Dark Time; Essays (Picador).
Finders Keepers; Selected Prose 1971-2001 (Faber and Faber) is Seamus Heaney's selection of recent essay collections, including pieces not previously collected in book form. Christopher Hitchens turns his attention to Mr 1984 in Why Orwell Matters (Allen Lane).
Thriller/Crime
The White Road (Hodder & Stoughton) is John Connolly's new novel; another darkly atmospheric and menacing tale featuring detective Charlie Parker. Another crime writer with a similar surname and a new book is Michael Connelly and City of Bone (Orion). Barbara Vine's latest book is The Blood Doctor (Viking). Hell to Pay (Orion) is from George P. Pelecanos. Colin Bateman looks at the, ahem, racy side of horse-racing in The Horse With My Name (HarperCollins).
Popular Fiction
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton is so confident of Stephen King's new book, From a Buick 8 that the advance information describes it as "the new worldwide bestseller" - three months before it hits the shops. Jack Higgins will be hoping his eagle lands again with Midnight Runner (HarperCollins). Arabella Weir looks at that cracked chap, Stupid Cupid (Penguin).
Memoir/Autobiography
The long-awaited memoir from poet Richard Murphy on his complex life and just-as-complex comtemporaries, including W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, and Ted Hughes called The Kick is due in May (Granta). Thank God he kept such a detailed diary over the last five decades. His Protestant gentry background, ambivalent sexuality and obsession with the west of Ireland coastline will all feature alongside tales of the literary milieux of London, Dublin and New York. Social historian Peter Somerville-Large recalls his pre-war Anglo-Irish upbringing in An Irish Childhood (Constable). Mental illness funny? That's how Andy Behrman remembers his manic depression in Electrobody; A Memoir of Mania (Viking). Mo Mowlam's Momentum; The Struggle for Peace, Politics, and the People (Hodder & Stoughton) is the ex-Secretary of State's story in her own words. Fay Weldon tells all in Auto Da Fay (Flamingo). Margaret Thatcher, the lady who was not for turning, has rummaged in her handbag and turned in a third backward glance of a book in Statecraft (Flamingo). Mary Russell started her big travels in her 40s and is still going. She tells her story in Journeys of a Lifetime (Townhouse/Scribner).
Biography
The whole craft of biography and autobiography no less is the subject of veteran biographer Michael Holroyd's book Works on Paper due out in January (Little, Brown). Culled from lectures and essays dating back a quarter of a century, it is billed as including an attack on the very genre of biography itself.
Nietzsche's shadow still falls: German scholar Rudiger Safranski looks at his life in Nietzsche, A Philosophical Biography (Granta). Murdered Tory MP Airey Neave is the subject of Paul Routledge's Public Servant, Secret Agent; The Enigmatic Life and Violent Death of Airey Neave (Fourth Estate). The Romanovs continue to fascinate: Carolly Erickson focuses on Alexandra, A Life of the Last Tsarina (Constable). Carole Angier's The Double Bond; Primo Levi (Viking). Levi is also the subject of Ian Thompson's Primo Levi (Hutchinson). The elusive and brilliant Van the Man is the subject of Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence; A Biography of Van Morrison (Viking). Jorge Luis Borges is the subject of Edwin Williamson's Borges; The Biography (Viking). Kipling's life was as exotic as the Kim he so famously wrote about: David Gilmore gets under his skin in The Long Recessional; The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (John Murray). The first volume of Edmund Morris's biography of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer; his second volume is Theodore Rex 1901-1909 (Flamingo). Sarah MacDougall's first book is Mark Gertler (John Murray); the artist who inspired his peer writers to include him as a character in their books, among them D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and Aldous Huxley. Gerhard Mercator is the man who was able to contain the world in a book; the first atlas. Nicholas Crane goes back in time to find out how he did it. Mercator; The Man Who Mapped The Planet (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Brenda Maddox eschews writers as subjects this time to study young forgotten scientist, Rosalind Franklin; The Dark Lady of DNA (Flamingo).
Napoleon is evergreen as a subject; it's Paul Johnson's turn to look at him in his Napolean (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). The speedy man is the subject of Bill Borrows's The Hurricane; the Turbulent Life and Times of Alex Higgins (Atlantic). Dickens (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), is another beloved subject of biographers, except this time it's novelist Jane Smiley who has him under observation, and sure to have a fresh angle. Journalist Mary Kenny looks at that odd character from the second World War in The Confused Loyalties of William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw (New Island). Bernard Adams has written the first biography of Irish playwright Denis Johnston in Denis Johnston; A Life (Lilliput). Not a straight biography, travel writer Tim Severin looks at the legend behind Robinson Crusoe, and meditates on where in the real world such a castaway might have fetched up in Seeking Robinson Crusoe (Macmillan). The charismatic photographer and founder of Magnum picture agency, Robert Capa, is portrayed by Alex Kershaw in Blood and Champagne; The Life and Times of Robert Capa (Macmillan). The man who made the apple famous intrigues Patricia Fara in Newton; The Making of Genius (Macmillan).
Sports
Eamon Dunphy and Roy Keane will tell the tale of the latter's life - Manchester United memories, the Irish squad, the trials and tribulations of captaincy, plus, plus, in the big sports biography of the year Roy Keane's Autobiography, due from Penguin in the autumn. The GAA is under the spotlight again. Tom Morrison has done a forensic examination in For the Record; A History of the National Football and Hurling League Finals (Collins Press).
General'
Renowned American oral historian Studs Terkel approaches the difficult subject of death in Will the Circle be Unbroken? Reflections of Death (Granta). Documentary maker Stephen Walker examines with necessary humour the allure of Cannes to the hordes of novice film-makers in King of Cannes; A Journey Into the Underbelly of the Movies (Bloomsbury). Will literary correspondences survive e-mail? Family Business, Selected Letters between a Father and a Son (Bloomsbury) tracks Louis and Allen Ginsberg's exchanges between 1944 and 1976. The Selected Letters of Jessica Mitford (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), has been edited by Peter Y. Sussman at the request of her family.
Journalist Sylvia Thompson has written a comprehensive guide to alternative health therapies in Test-Driving Complementary Therapies (Gill & Macmillan). Ever feel sorry for unworldly nuns? Supported by private incomes, they seem to have had a wild time partying in 17th century Italy, according to Mary Laven's Virgins of Venice; Convent Life in an Age of Reform (Viking).
Ar chreag i lβr na farraige by Lillis ╙ Laoire is an anthropological study of Tory Island in Co Donegal through music and song with more than 100 photographs. (Cl≤ Iar Chonnachta).