A selection of this week's new publications reviewed
Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland, Richard English, Pan, £7.99
Richard English sets out not only to tell the story of Irish nationalism but to "explain" nationalism, to mine right through to its philosophical core, so to speak.
He certainly succeeds in his first ambition, while the stimulating challenge for the reader is to determine if he or she accepts his analysis of nationalism - he sees its birth in the United Irishmen - or has an alternative view.
The history is all accessibly there, from Henry II up to Hume and Adams, and all the history around the key figures.
It's provocative, interesting and lively, a work of epic research and energy, just revisionist enough to question the conventional Irish nationalist view of history, while even-handed in its treatment of unionism and Britain's involvement in Ireland, an old story told with a fresh, probing perspective. - Gerry Moriarty
Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones, John Murray, £7.99
Lloyd Jones is an experienced novelist - this Man Booker- nominated novel is his sixth work - which partly explains why this is such an affecting story, confidently told.
On an island off Papua New Guinea, blockaded by war, a white man, Mr Watts, reads Great Expectations to the children.
One girl, 13-year-old Matilda - through whom we watch events unfold - becomes particularly fascinated with both Pip and the unusual, alien world of Dickens's London.
At first, Watts's daily delivery of a chapter mirrors the excitement that greeted its original publication, while parallels between the book's characters and the island's population abound.
However, as the war arrives in the village, the book at first appears to bring protection, but soon attracts danger. Daubed with the colour of Pacific island language, this is a beautifully-written tale. - Shane Hegarty
The Friends of Meager Fortune, David Adam Richards, Vintage, £7.99
Sensitive, bookish Owen Jameson has always been in the shadow of his brave and adventurous brother Will, who takes over the family lumber company in a remote area of New Brunswick at the age of just 15.
But when Will dies in a logging accident, Owen, who has just been rejected by the girl he loves, heads off to fight in the second World War. He returns a decorated war hero, and takes over the family business.
But he struggles to win over the workmen, who view him as an unimpresssively cerebral replacement for his brother. Determined to save the business, he takes the men to work in a remote and dangerous mountain region.
Meanwhile, the town is buzzing with gossip about his relationship with a married woman. Adam Richards's powerful, lyrical writing elevates what could be a predictable (even dull) tale of rugged men struggling against nature and each other into something strangely beautiful. - Anna Carey
The Unquiet, John Connolly, Hodder & Stoughton, £6.99
Maine PI Charles "Bird" Parker investigates the fate of a psychiatrist who disappeared years previously after allegations that children in his care had been abused.
But Bird has a gnawing realisation that, yet again, he's knocking heads with malevolent forces, not all of them of this world.
Fans of John Connolly's detective series (this is the sixth) should be alerted that this atmospheric, sombre novel is a different kind of beast.
The body count is lower and the story builds slowly, as Parker comes up against a former contract killer with his own reasons for finding the doctor; a shadow army of "hollow men"; paedophile rings involving the Russian mafia and a group of bird mask- wearing perverts; and a compelling adversary from a previous crazy case.
The book ends with the tantalising suggestion that Parker has lost his soul - and that the ultimate enemy is yet to come. - Kevin Sweeney
The New Faber Book of Love Poems, Ed. James Fenton, Faber, £9.99
"'The short lyric that says 'I love you' is like the little black cocktail dress - no couture collection should be without such classics. No poetry collection either," James Fenton tells us in his introduction to a new anthology of love poetry that bursts with little black dresses for all shapes and sizes.
Poetry lovers being a precious and often pernickety lot, no doubt some will cavil at notable exclusions - where is E.E. cummings? Edna St Vincent Millay? Jack Gilbert? - and perhaps tut tut at so many Campions and so few Parkers, but Fenton's selection includes such a number of impassioned odes to love that his anthology is essential reading for anyone still capable of internal flutterings that can't be put down to indigestion.
What joyfully emerges is a unique sense of the universal nature of this most individual of emotions, love. - Fiona McCann
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Xiaolu Guo, Vintage, £7.99
Over the last few years, a number of American and European writers and film makers, from Sofia Coppola to Rachel DeWoskin, have depicted the sense of dislocation felt by westerners in Asia.
Xiaolu Guo's exquisite novel shows the other side of the story. Inspired by the author's diaries of her own first arrival in the UK, it's the story of Zhuang, a young Chinese girl who lands in England armed with little more than a Chinese-English dictionary and a place at an English language school.
She's bewildered by this strange, damp country, and she tells her story in awkward English that becomes more fluent as the book goes along and her language skills improve.
She feels more at home when she falls for a much older English man, but language isn't the only barrier between them. A sad, sweet and utterly original book. - Anna Carey