A sneak preview of the books pages in tomorrow’s Irish Times

Panti Bliss aka Rory O’Neill: his memoir is reviewed tomorrow by Anna Carey. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons
Panti Bliss aka Rory O’Neill: his memoir is reviewed tomorrow by Anna Carey. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons

The end of the year is nigh, so our Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby selects her books of 2014, both fiction and non-fiction.

Martin Doyle reviews Us by David Nicholls, his long-awaited follow-up to the bestseller, One Day. It's a bittersweet but always witty tale of a flawed father's belated journey of self-discovery.

Sarah Gilmartin finds biographer Diana Souhami's debut novel Gwendolen gives George Eliot's heroine from Daniel Deronda a convincing voice.

Anna Carey falls head over high heels in love with Rory O'Neill's Woman in the Making: A Memoir, the uplifting story of the creator of Panti Bliss, drag queen and "accidental activist".

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Cathy Dillon explores why, despite the plethora of new titles on the market, publishers still have a soft spot for reissuing forgotten gems, while Sara Keating's ebooks column looks at the rise of comic books on the e-reader.

When You Put the Heart Across Us All by Geraldine Mitchell is our poem of the week.

Denis Donoghue reviews the second volume of David Moody's splendid biography of Ezra Pound, The Epic Years 1921-1939.

From ivory tower to political power, Edmund Burke is expertly elucidated by David Bromwich’s new study, says Luke Gibbons of NUI Maynooth.

TCD professor Antóin Murphy, co-author with Donal Donovan of The Fall of the Celtic Tiger: Ireland and the Euro Debt Crisis, turns his attention to another boom and bust tale from Ireland's past in his review of Patrick Walsh's The South Sea Bubble and Ireland: Money Banking and Investment, 1690-1721.