History/Politics
With a cast of hundreds, from Lemass to Bertie - not forgetting a wedge of Haughey in between - Fianna Fail, The Party of Power, by the Sunday Tribune political correspondent, Stephen Collins, will trace the march of the Soldiers of Destiny from 1966 to the year 2,000. Party members will be thumbing the index on this one to see how they're portrayed, but given the party's volatile fortunes of late, this title will have a strong general readership as well. It's due in October from The O'Brien Press.
Meanwhile Wolfhound Press's big title in this category will be Bombed and Abandoned: The Dublin-Monaghan Bombings, by Don Mullan and John Scally. Was there collusion between the British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries? This, and other aspects of the tragedy, will be aired again when the book appears in May. To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland, by Sean O'Callaghan, due from Mount Eagle, will document the story of 50,000 Irish people who were transported to Barbados and Virginia between 1652 and 1659.
This extraordinary transportation is explored here for the first time by O'Callaghan, whose previous books include The Slave Trade in Africa. University College Dublin Press will publish Oracles of God: The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922-37 by Patrick Murray, which should make interesting comparative reading with the cluster of books by Eunan O'Halpin, John M. Regan, Michael Laffan et al on Irish history of roughly the same period which came out last year.
In a similar vein come two titles from Irish Academic Press: Our Own Devices: National Symbols and Political Conflict in Twentieth-Century Ireland by the New Zealand-based academic Ewan Morris, and The Irish Revolution and its Aftermath: Years of Revolt, by Francis Costello, who recently moved from the US to live in Belfast.
Rarely does a year go by without yet more books on Dublin, and the year 2,000 is going to be no exception. Foraying into non-fiction for the occasion is poet Pat Boran with A Short History of Dublin, due from Mercier Press in Feburary. Described as a canter through Dublin, it won't be all nostalgia: the massive growth of the capital, traffic jams, ghettoisation, and the housing shortage will also feature. Also focusing on the capital is historian Peter Pearson in Dublin: Survival and Revival of an Ancient Capital, from O'Brien Press.
Northern Ireland
The North continues to provide title after title, and following the dramatic turnaround of recent events, it's a tide that can only swell. Blackstaff Press will row in with Flash Frames: Twelve Years Reporting Belfast, by Mark Davenport, a perspective on politics and media from the BBC's ex-Northern Ireland correspondent. Blackstaff also has journalist Susan McKay's Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People. Is this a community with a sense of losing ground, feeling under threat and betrayed? McKay, herself from a Northern Protestant background, who had much success with her last book - about incest victim Sophia McColgan - explores these and other questions in a book due out in March.
February will see the publication, also by Blackstaff, of Death of a Soldier: A Mother's Search for Peace in Northern Ireland by the English woman Rita Restorick, whose 23-year-old son Stephen was killed by a sniper's bullet in 1997 as he manned a checkpoint in South Armagh. "The last soldier to be killed in Northern Ireland. Since his death she has channelled her grief into tireless campaigning for peace," says her publisher, which i s timing publication to coincide with the third anniversary of his death. Mount Eagle has A Soldier of the Queen, by Bernard O'Mahony with Mick McGovern: a retrospective account of life in the Royal Dragoon Guards during the height of the notorious hunger strikes. Longest title of 2000 may be the Columba Press's An Ulster-Scots Perspective on Heritage, History, Hostility and Hope in Northern Ireland, by W. A. Hanna, who is an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Meanwhile 50 years of women's lives will be scrutinised in Women in Ulster Politics 1890-1940 by Queen's University lecturer, Diane Urquhart, which will be published by Irish Academic Press.
Current Affairs
The hot topic of refugees will be tackled in Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Ireland by the Irish Times Development Correspondent, Paul Cullen. The book, which examines the recent increase here in the numbers of refugees and considers the changing nature of Irish society, will be published by Cork University Press. There's also Racism and Anti-Racism in Irish Society, edited by Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh, from Irish Academic Press. CUP will publish Prison Policy in Ireland by Paul O'Mahony, an expert in the field, which will compare the Irish system with the international one, while Mountjoy: The Story of a Prison by Tim Carey, to be published by Collins Press, will mark the 150th anniversary of this troubled institution. Four Courts Press has Irish Women at Work 1500-1930, edited by Bernadette Whelan, while Lilliput is introducing a new imprint, Sitric, which will have as its first title The Beat: Life on the Streets, by David Fine, based on interviews with 18 Dublin prostitutes.
The other side of the story is told in Marino Books' Love for Rent: The Untold Story of Male Prostitution in Ireland, by Today FM journalist, Evanna Kearins. A Message from Heaven: The Life and Times of Father Sean Fortune, by Alison O'Connor, whose coverage of the Fortune case for this newspaper won her an ESB National Media Award, will be published by Mount Eagle. Traffic will doubtless turn up again in Rail Versus Road in Ireland 1900-2000, by Michael Collins, to be published by Colourpoint Books: the timing certainly couldn't be better for a hard look at Ireland's dismal public transport policy.
Biography/Memoir
Famous because of the controversy surrounding his collection of Impressionist paintings - which still divide their time between London and Dublin - Hugh Lane has remained until now a shadow figure of the Irish Renaissance. Lane, who died on the Lusitania and was a nephew of Lady Gregory, is to be the subject of a biography by Irish Times journalist Robert O'Byrne, to be published by Lilliput in the autumn. CUP has Madeleine Sophie Barat: A Life. Barat, who was canonised in 1925, was the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart in 1800. Also from CUP is the substantial Harry Boland's Irish Revolution, 1887-1922 by David Fitzpatrick of TCD, which draws on a number of little-known letters, diaries, police reports and memoirs of the time. In June A&A Farmar will bring out O'Brien's Place by Angeline Kearns Blain, an autobiography revolving around the Ringsend area of Dublin in the 1940s and 1950s, which is particularly interesting for the way it reveals the difference between the lives of women and men at that time. Lilliput has Gander at the Gate, by Rory O'Connor, the author's story of growing up in 1930s Knocknagoshel, and a book for which Lilliput is predicting major success. From New Island Books comes a book of recollections, Donal McCann Remembered, about the late actor, with contributions by those who knew him in his personal and professional life. Final Pages: A Writer's Life is the last instalment of Criostoir O'Flynn's literary memoir, from Mercier.
General
Another book from Robert O'Byrne of this newspaper, After a Fashion is an illustrated Town House title which takes a comprehensive look at Irish fashion since 1950 and will coincide with a series of the same title on RTE. Four Courts offers The Best of Kevin Myers, from his Irishman's Diary in The Irish Times.
From Mount Eagle comes Cover-Up: The Disaster at Tuskar Rock, by Dan Binchy, which includes some new material about the mysterious Aer Lingus crash about which many questions still linger. Collins's The Heritage of Ireland: A Management Perspective, edited by Neil Buttimer, Colin Rynne, and Helen Guerin looks at natural, manmade, and cultural heritage; conservation and interpretation; and the administration and business of same.
Mercier will be bringing out The Making of the Celtic Tiger: The Inside Story of Ireland's Boom Economy, by Ray MacSharry with economics consultant Kieran Kennedy, described as "the inside story of Ireland's economic miracle".
New Island's A Book of Matches, edited by George O'Brien, has various Irish poets and novelists looking at different sports from their own idiosyncratic perspectives, including Mary O'Malley on hurling; Anthony Cronin on horse-racing; and Joe O'Connor on soccer. Exile, Emigration, and Irish Writing, by Patrick Ward, is from Irish Academic Press, while A&A Farmar has Lovers, Queens and Strangers by Anne Bernard Kearney, tales of six women in Irish Celtic myth, retold from a feminist perspective.
Town House's Irish Indoor Insects: The Complete Guide was written by entomologists at the National History Museum - now you can identify what's bugging you - while in the same nature vein, and also from Townhouse, is Irish Mammals by zoologist Tom Hayden.
Photography
Gill and MacMillan will publish Images of Ireland: Limerick, by Larry Walsh, curator of the Limerick Museum: a project which was passed on to him after the death of Jim Kemmy. Ireland, The Inner Island: A Journey Through Ireland's Inland Waterways by Kevin Dwyer captures the Shannon and the canal networks both from air and ground.
Fiction
Mount Eagle are hoping for big sales from Alice Taylor's Mossgrove, a sequel to The Woman of the House. New Island Books will be hoping for the same with a TV tie-in due with publication of Gretta Curran Browne's Relative Strangers. Mentor Press has A Woman Unbeaten by Mary Rose Glennon, and Trolley Ride in Manhattan by Fergal O'Byrne. The first crime thriller from John Galvin, former Hennessey/Sunday Tribune short-story competition winner, about rural Garda life, is due from Town House, which will also have a new book from Julie Parsons.
Moving on to short stories, Blackstaff has Telling: New and Selected Stories by the Monaghan-born writer Evelyn Conlon, with nine new stories intermingled with older ones, as well as The Coffin Master and Other Stories from John F. Deane. Fish Publishing will produce its annual anthology of 15 prize-winning stories, judges of which include Dermot Bolger and William Wharton. Fish also has Ian Wild's Leopold Bloom's Underpants, "off the wall stories" which will do fine if they're as arresting as their title.
Popular Fiction
The new novel from Deirdre Purcell is Town House's Entertaining Ambrose. Poolbeg has Olivia's Bliss by Deborah Wright, winner of its "Write a Bestseller" competition, and Fast Forward by Clare Dowling, a scriptwriter for Fair City. Ellie by Jackie Mills, from Mount Eagle, is a thriller/love story. Marino has A Very Private Affair by Dee Cunningham. From Wolfhound comes Once Upon A Summer, by Patricia O'Reilly, set in the 1950s.
Poetry
Gallery will be publishing the Collected Poems of Richard Murphy in June. Other titles from Gallery include Kerry Hardie's much-awaited second collection, Cry for the Hot Belly; David Wheatley's Misery Hill; and Peter Sirr's Bring Everything. Biddy Jenkinson's Rogha Danta appears from Cork University Press. Blackstaff has The Colour of Our Reaching by Siobhan Campbell. Irish Times Books also plans to publish a collection of the 100 favourite Irish poems of all time, in English and Irish, as chosen by readers in a competition held in the paper and on the website last autumn. The results, which were announced last week, showed The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats to be the winner. Dedalus will be publishing new collections by Pat Boran, John Ennis, Pat O'Brien, Desmond O Grady and Eva Bourke, as well as Macdara Woods's New Selected Poems. Salmon's titles include Gold Set Dancing from James Liddy; Proximity by Patrick Chapman; and Selected and New Poems from both Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, and the late Eithne Strong, who was working on this when she died.
This guide is composed from information available from a number of Irish publishers at the time of going to press