Collectively these bring us closer to an understanding of the genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguished Heaney as one of the great poet-translators of all time. 'The Translations .

Here come the roots of the Shadow Tree. Whatever they touch will never get free. Liska lives in Arborven, a city surrounding an extraordinary tree that gives all those living there special powers.

This is narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature. Praise for Open City: 'Open City is not a loud novel, nor a thriller, nor a nail-biter.

Trieste.

There's trouble on the planet of Yule-1, the real home of Father Christmas . Once again Jake and Sadie are transported to a place where elves and reindeer are their friends and everything is about getting ready for Christmas, the best holiday of the year.

To the authorities in pursuit of him, outlaw Ned Kelly is a horse thief, bank robber and police-killer. But to his fellow ordinary Australians, Kelly is their own Robin Hood. In an act of ventriloquism, the author brings the famous bushranger wildly and passionately to life.

Whether dissecting European architecture's obsession with historical loss, or the male gaze in photographer Andre Kertesz's work, Breathnach's writing - brave, wild, and genre-bending - heralds a dazzling new voice in literary prose.

Beware of Jaws and meet Georgie, Thomasina, Serendipity the Snail and other characters in this collection of hand rhymes. Arranged in order of increasing difficulty, these rhymes are designed for use at home or in the classroom. Wendy Cope is the author of "The River Girl".