The latest paperback releases.
District and Circle by Seamus Heaney. Faber and Faber, £8.99
Seamus Heaney's 12th - and deservedly much-praised - collection includes several poems that at once earn a place among his most indispensable (the title sequence certainly; others too, including Anahorish 1944, In Iowa, The Blackbird of Glanmore ). District and Circle delights with new insights into familiar territory and themes: the close-to-home world that nurtured his nascent poetic sensibility is here richly elaborated. But this volume is equally distinguished by imaginative and weighted responses to some of the determining events and trepidations of our present time. At times, a wonderful ease enters the poems (A Clip, Tate's Avenue), but a rippling sense of unease when he cocks his ear and fixes his gaze on a world in which "the three-tongued glacier has begun to melt". His reworking of Horace in one of the collection's key poems, Anything Can Happen, is the embodiment of a master's fusing of thought and image. Gerard Smyth
Tigers in Red Weather by Ruth Padel. Abacus, £8.99
Poet and zoologist Padel took a two-week holiday to India to recover from a broken heart, and found herself devoting the next two years to a quest for tigers. Darwin's great-great-granddaughter recounts the journey that took her from India to Indonesia, Burma to Bhutan in search of the "extreme image of the wild". Padel paints a detailed picture of the perilous state of the world's tigers, from the problems created by logging and poaching to the need to reconcile locals to their presence - "How can you sympathise with animals when you haven't enough to eat?" Accounts of jungle treks and conservation programmes are interspersed with insights into the history and mythology of the tiger. Padel was lucky - she saw a tiger. Unless something is done, she argues, few of her readers will. Freya McClements
Yours, Faithfully by Sheila O'Flanagan. Headline Review, €14.99
Sally Harper has been happily married for nearly 20 years to a loving, hard-working, successful businessman. Iona Harper has been happily married for four years to an equally loving, hard-working and successful businessman. The only problem is that both women are married to the same man, the patently irresistible Frank Harper. In this light read, Sheila O'Flanagan wriggles out of explaining the root of his infidelity by allowing Frank to float along in a coma while his wives work out their new circumstances in a very civilised manner. Even with Frank's eventual death, the sense of loss is eclipsed by the emerging female bonding which extends to Garda Detective Siobhán Farrell, who is investigating Frank's accident. If you're looking for big answers to big questions, this is not the book for you, but for a light diversion you couldn't do much better. Claire Looby
Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town by Nate Blakeslee. Public Affairs, £8.99
In the summer of 1999, Tulia, a spot on the Texas panhandle, raised its head from obscurity when its undercover policeman Tom Coleman fingered 47 suspects - mostly African Americans and Hispanics, representing 10 per cent of the town's population - for dealing crack and powdered cocaine. Within a year, despite the flimsiness of evidence, most were convicted, some to as many as 99 years in prison, while super-cop Coleman was named Texas Lawman of the Year. What Coleman didn't say in his acceptance speech was it was all a lie. While not having the sophistication or charm of Capote's In Cold Blood, Blakeslee's appeal is in the recording and sequencing of far greater connivance and corruption; the biographies, lifestyles and thoughts of over 50 characters; and the painstaking attention to detail that accurately recreates Tulia's 15 minutes of fame. Paul O'Doherty
Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink by David Margolick. Bloomsbury, £9.99
The two boxing matches between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis could not have been more highly charged. Schmeling was "the fighting son of the Fatherland" who took tea with Hitler. Louis was a barely literate Detroit factory worker, a black hero who caused "the greatest celebration of race pride our generation had ever known", in Malcolm X's words. When they met to fight for the world heavyweight championship in June 1938 in New York's Yankee Stadium, Duke Ellington and J Edgar Hoover had ringside seats. Margolick's approach can be workmanlike, but the reader experiences his enthusiasm for boxing in its 1930s heyday through the masses of contemporary journalism he has assembled. These forgotten commentators - black, white, European and American - bring alive the excitement and tension, not to mention the fascism and racism, of this great sporting rivalry. Ralph Benson
To See Every Bird on Earth by Dan Koeppel. Penguin, £8.99
Richard Koeppel, the author's father, is what is known in birdwatching circles as a "big lister"; his aim is to see every species of bird in the world. The two men journey together to Brazil's Jau National Park where Richard has his sights set on his 7,000th specimen, the Amazonian Black Tyrant. Dan, a nature and adventure writer, will settle for getting closer to his father. The eccentric and all-consuming hobby had played a major part in the break-up of his parents' marriage, and in his own dysfunctional childhood. From this unusual mix of family drama and ornithology emerges a hugely entertaining and highly original memoir. As addictive as Richard's smoking habit, which would lead to the illness that finally made him call a halt with an incredible figure of 7,200. Martin Noonan