Death And Nightingales Eugene McCabe
232 pages, Bloomsbury
Beth Winters wakes up one morning in 1883 to take us through one rather uncommon day, beginning as she takes stock of what poisons are on hand around the farm. Born of a Catholic mother and raised by a Protestant stepfather to whom she's more servant than daughter, Beth has by necessity become capable of many things. Is killing one? Death and Nightingales is about existence under continuous threats - from the ‘other' – the other religion, the other class, the other sex. McCabe's prose lightens the gloom of typical Irish atmosphere – indeed, he writes the Fermanagh landscape more lovingly than he does the merciless characters inhabiting it.

The Speckled People Hugo Hamilton
304 pages, Harper Collins
A departure from the typical Irish memoir in that this is a family you actually want to sit down to dinner with. Speckled refers to the authors mixed heritage – a stern and staunchly Gaelic father who abhorred all things English, particularly the language; and a German mother, whose love for life reveals just how much she'd lost during the war years in her homeland. This is less a story of childhood than a family portrait seen through the eyes of a remarkably observant and elegant-minded boy.

Our Like Will Not Be Here Again Lawrence Millman
209 pages, Ruminator Books
Itinerant chronicler Millman tramps the west coast of Ireland to gather stories before they die with the gritty characters telling them. Farriers, farmers, and tinkers more or less portray themselves – with great bluster and colour only the Irish seem to manage in the most mundane of circumstance. Millman records their stories with a light hand and a dose of humor borrowed from his gnarly subjects.

Fishing the Sloe Black River Colum McCann
208 pages, Picador
Short stories from one of Irelands most gifted expatriates. In Fishing McCann draws some of the keenest characters in contemporary fiction. In his beautiful allegory, Cathal's Lake he gives us a farmer plagued with the chore of digging up swans that are souls of those perished in ‘the troubles' in Northern Ireland. Also a novelist ( This Side Of Brightness and Dancer ) McCann is a fearless writer - willing to take on such a range of voices, i.e., Nureyev, an aging pugilist, an anorexic nun…

Whoredom in Kimmage Rosemary Mahoney
336 pages, Knopf
Mahoney's portrayals of her contemporaries bear little resemblance to the cliché'd Molly Bloom that Joyce so bitterly served up as his idea of Irish womanhood. Even so, times have been slow to change since Molly's day, and in a country that still seems to embrace martyrdom even after the leap of Mary Robinson's election as the first woman president of the Republic. Mahoney gives us intimate introductions to housewives, lesbians and poets. Though is was written before divorce was legalized, and before scandals knocked the wind out of Catholic church, Whoredom still holds up with its fresh views of the Irish female character.

The Nature of Water and Air Regina McBride
320 pages, Simon & Schuster
Eerie, atmospheric and crafted with such saturated romance I was surprised to learn the novel was set in the 1970's. Regina McBride's first novel of sisters and daughters is packed with myth – a legendary mother who might have been a selkie, or at least an alluring tinker, and a father equally mysterious. Twin girls bound by blood and music are parted by death, and Clodagh, the surviving sister, follows her mother's flight to a finale that is a bit too pat, but beautifully written and worth the trip.

Grace Notes Bernard McLaverty
277 pages, Norton
What Ann Patchett did in Bel Canto to weave music through a novel, McLaverty had already done in this fine, small novel of a composer struggling for acceptance in a male-dominated field. Living in near-exile on a Scottish island, Catherine McKenna returns to Northern Ireland to bury her father and face her mother, her past, and all that has been denied. A poignant novel of how one woman tows the weight of her past as a train of musical notes.