A guide to the latest releases.
A Game of Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton. Phoenix, £7.99
Dublin in the 1940s - food shortages and political uncertainties, dreariness and censorship. Into this unlikely Eden arrives an improbable exile - Erwin Schrödinger, brilliant physicist and author of the equations of wave mechanics. A refugee from the Nazis, he is in Ireland at the invitation of Eamon de Valera, founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies and - so they say - one of the 10 people in the world at the time who actually understands relativity theory. He hopes Schrödinger's work will "help us bring our imagination to its full radiance". With his wife, mistress and unacknowledged daughter holed up in a house in Clontarf, Schrödinger embarks on an affair with a young Irishwoman. This is a novel of many layers, all of them startlingly evocative. It's about war, science, love - or the lack of it - big ideas and small kindnesses. It's breathtaking. Arminta Wallace
The Pope's Children: Ireland's New Elite by David McWilliams. Gill and MacMillan, €12.99
This entertaining portrait of the nation celebrates the "huge social mobility, most of it upwards" of the last decade. McWilliams calls this the Wonderbra effect: society has been lifted up and pushed into the middle. The cleavage is between Decklanders, the BMW 3-series drivers from Dublin commuter counties, and Hibernian Cosmopolitans, who frequent farmers' markets and send their kids to Gaelscoileanna. Of course, this is a caricature. McWilliams is right to emphasise the credit and property booms, but his claim that "architects are the new Gods" will surely strike even members of that profession as bizarre. His habit of nicknaming every aspect of Ireland he describes - Boringbelt, Bridezilla - quickly becomes irritating. The Wonderbra effect operates on the book itself, making it look deeper than it actually is. But everyone will recognize someone they know in it. Ralph Benson
Time Added On by George Hook. Penguin Ireland, £7.99
The time added on in the title refers to the new lease of life George Hook received with a new career. Having grown up in Cork, he led a varied life before his present incarnation as broadcaster and pundit, working as a travelling salesman, in the catering business and as a rugby coach. There was contentment in rugby but his business career was frequently a disaster; he barely kept his head above water. At one stage he even mortgaged his own mother's house without her knowledge to pay a creditor. Rugby, his personal charm and friends kept him going, as hounded by the "black dog" of depression and a sense of failure, he considered suicide before finding his true niche late in life. Devastatingly honest and at times inspiring, Hook owns up to his faults, in both his professional and personal life, with a candour that makes for painful reading at times. Eoghan Morrissey
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King Pimlico £7.99
So we now know Michelangelo didn't fresco the Sistine Chapel ceiling while lying on his back: elaborate scaffolding he designed mirrored the shape of the vault and allowed him to stand upright while he worked. Nor did he do the job single-handedly: he had a team of assistants to help him. Nor, on a more intimate level, is there any evidence that he was a homosexual, though the Sistine Chapel reflects his preference for depicting the male body. Ross King sticks closely to the documented facts, as well as Michelangelo's letters to his family, to tell the fascinating story of the creation of this most awe-inspiring work of art, seamlessly interweaving the stormy relationship between Michelangelo and Pope Julius II, and the turbulent Papal wars and local feuds of the time. Fionnuala Mulcahy
Tough Cookies by Simon Wright. Profile Books, £7.99
The Tough Cookies that Simon Wright refers to are British chefs Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Shaun Hill and Marcus Wareing. With a martial arts expert (Blumenthal), and an amateur boxer (Wareing), and a tempestuous former footballer, famous for his use of expletives (Ramsey) among their number, the title is apt. In 2003 Wright resigned as editor of the AA Good Food Guide in protest at a decision not to award the AA's highest accolade to Wareing's restaurant Petrus, part of the Gordon Ramsey stable. This principled stand obviously didn't go unnoticed by Ramsay and Wareing, who tell their life stories to Wright with honesty and humour for this collection of mini-biographies, peppered with the author's pithy observations on the restaurant trade. In addition, Blumenthal reveals how he arrived at the eureka moments that unleashed snail porridge and bacon and egg ice cream on an unsuspecting gastronomic world. Tuck in. Marie-Claire Digby
Barefoot in Mullyneeny by Bryan Gallagher. HarperCollins, £6.99
Bryan Gallagher's reminiscences from a childhood spent close to the shores of Lough Erne in Co Fermanagh were first aired on BBC Radio 4's excellent Home Truths series. His journey from early schooldays to university in Belfast is recalled in 48 bitter-
sweet tales of rural life in Ireland during the 1940s and 1950s. It was a time when boys went to school barefoot, and the first lessons of belonging were learned. The wild Fermanagh landscape, its people, their traditions and their language are at the heart of his stories. Bitter tales of loneliness, isolation and emigration are sweetened with accounts of mighty football challenges, school-yard pranks and ballrooms of romance. A sensitive, compassionate and witty memoir told by a retired schoolteacher and master storyteller, and far from the maudlin gloom often associated with this genre.
Martin Noonan