Set on Ireland's Atlantic coast, Before the House Burns is a tender, implosive first novel by an award-winning short story writer and poet. It concerns the lives of its three young narrators, children of a bereaved father and witnesses to a shared grief.

This nuanced and heart-breaking account of one family's struggle - for work, shelter and happiness - enters the imagination through this braided, pitch-perfect tale of a family whose lives fracture around two tragic events. It is a story of what happens when self-sustenance turns to isolation, a story about the hard scrabble to find a home.

Despite their sufferings, this is not yet another tale of an unhappy Irish childhood. What makes this novel unique is not only the calibre of the writing, but also its depiction of the love that binds the family together as they suffer blow after blow to their lives.

The author: Mary O'Donoghue was born in 1975 and grew up in Co. Clare. Her short stories have been published in Agni, Salamander, The Dublin Review, Literary Imagination and elsewhere. Her awards for fiction include Hennessy/Sunday Tribune, New Irish Writer and a writer's bursary from Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the author of poetry collections Tulle (Salmon Poetry, 2001) and Among These Winters (Dedalus Press, 2007). She teaches in the Arts and Humanities division at Babson College, Massachusetts, and lives in Boston.

Release date: May 2010

This is a biography of the music critic and commentator, chronicling his family's history over 300 years at Kilmacurragh in County Wicklow (now a celebrated arboretum in the care of the State), and his work for the Irish Times over thirty years (1955-88).

There is a comprehensive view of his Irish background, his education in England at Rugby and Cambridge and his career in Dublin. Beginning with the rich source material of Acton family papers (a detailed tenant record of Kilmacurragh estate, for example) and correspondence (to his mother and others), the book goes on to elaborate in fascinating detail the cultural framework of his milieu in broadcasting for RTE and in music with the Royal Irish Academy of Music, of which he was governor and eventually vice-president.

He was one of only two critics outside Britain to gain entry to the Critics' Circle. His was a unique voice that helped to shape Ireland's musical culture.

The author: Richard Pine, writer and critic, is author of well-received books on Brian Friel and Oscar Wilde, as well as the standard work Music and Broadcasting in Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2005). He is director of the Durrell School of Corfu, where he lives.

Release date: June 2010

A book that for the first time details all 315 Irish forests and woodlands north and south open to the Irish public — visited, photographed and researched by the author over the course of five years. All woodlands are photographed and described in detail with information given on directions, parking, walking distances and terrain. Major woodwalks are mapped and featured on a county-by-county basis, with the co-operation of the Ordnance Survey and assistance from the Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Coillte, the Society of Irish Foresters, the Forestry Service of Northern Ireland and the Irish Tree Society.

Complete with glossary, index and species guide, this handsome large-format fully illustrated book will be an invaluable guide to visitor, conservator, forester and dendrophile, or for those who simply want to avail of the resources of Ireland's countryside.

About the Author: Donal Magner is an international forestry consultant and journalist, a correspondent with the Irish Farmer's Journal and secretary of the Wood Marketing Federation. He is editor of the Forestry and Timber Yearbook.

With a foreword by John Boorman.

'My name is Justin Alexander Torquhil Edward Peregrine Montague, but my father calls me 'you little bollocks', or when he is in a good mood, 'old cock'. Like I'm married to a hen. My best friend is Annie, Annie Cassidy. Annie is thirteen, just like me.'

It's 1963 in a country house in west Wicklow during the heady summer of JFK's visit to Ireland. Turbulence is in the air as Justin is locked in combat with his angry and inebriate father. A dark and poignant comedy unfolds and progresses to winter as Kennedy is assassinated and Justin ends his oedipal struggle and comes of age.

Replete with the perennial tensions between native and settler, servant and master, Camelot and Leinster House, this poignant tale concerns identity and first love, and the pain of a knowing child living amongst aliens. Told with the panache of PG Wodehouse crossed with Caroline Blackwood, it conveys the spirit of a bygone age and the very present emotions of a fast-growing boy. It is a masterful debut novel.

The author: Mark Macauley was born in 1956 and raised on the edge of the Wicklow Mountains. He lives between London and Africa and makes documentaries and writes screenplays. This is his first novel.

Release date: May 2010