Sure to pander to your wildest dreams

The Wolfclaw Chronicles by Tom Bryan, Rousseau Moon by David Cameron, Life Drawing by Linda Cracknell, Hi Bonnybrig & Other Greetings by Shug Hanlan, The Tin Man by Martin Shannon, Occasional Demons by Raymond Soltysek. They cost #9.99 each

Carl MacDougall

n A vision, a voyage, and the numbers game. The Wildest Dream by Peter and Leni Gillman (Headline): a biography of the driven George Mallory, lost high in tweeds on Everest's north face in 1924 and found recently there in remarkable preservation. A tale as intense as the hill itself. The bold boy George, a restless son of the manse, the maturing Cambridge blue, formative climber, and troubled husband - all tautly researched and wrapped for those, like me, intrigued at what made Mallory. The Race to the White Continent, by Alan Gurney (Norton) tells of earliest south Atlantic and Pacific landfalls and conflict, of Antarctic triumphs and disasters in finely-written and fascinating detail. Martin Rees's, Just Six Numbers (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) is a brilliant rough guide into force-fields that have shaped the universe with a precision as yet truly beyond human comprehension.

Alan Thomson

n BOOKS that become a permanent part of one's mental furniture don't come along every decade, but The Bottom of the Harbor (Cape) by Joseph Mitchell, the New Yorker journalist, is one of those rarities: six pieces of reportage, written in the 1940s and 1950s but previously unpublished in Britain, about the New York waterfront and the people who live and work on, around, and by it, a quiet masterpiece of humanist literature and English prose. George Saunders, the Yankee satirist, rang my bell with Pastoralia (Bloomsbury), funny and angry short stories raging against the bland cruelty of corporate America and speaking up for its blue-collar victims. Midas Dekkers, the Dutch botanist and essayist, struck a blow for sanity with The Way of All Flesh (Harvill), a droll series of arguments against the modern terror of ageing and decline and our neophiliac passion for the perfect and the new.

Kenneth Wright

n The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, by Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape) is such an accomplished piece of modern history that occasionally, on reading it, I shivered as my parents must have done all those years ago in a decade that brought me into the world, and the world into quite unimaginable brutishness. Yet Brendon engages the intellect more than the emotions, as he takes the reader on a journey haunted by human beastliness and which is a desperately timely warning for our new century. Australia: A Biography of a Nation, by Phillip Knightley (Jonathan Cape) was a sell-out Down Under, and is, for us Up-Overers, one of the most informative and entertaining accounts of a nation that emerged from the bush to inspire the world in the space of a single century. I have never been to Australia. Knightley has ensured that I shall go very soon. No Scot with an appetite for Gaelic Scotland

could fail to be seduced by Irish Classics, by Declan Kiberd (Granta Books), a beautifully crafted survey of the inextinguishable classics from the bardic era to modern times. I shall treasure Kiberd's insights into a brilliant array of stars, among them Swift, Goldsmith, Wilde, Shaw, Synge, Joyce, Beckett, O'Casey, O'Flaherty, and MacNeice.

Cal McCrystal

n FIVE poignant words closed the case for one of the great twentieth-century detectives. ''Chief Inspector Morse is dead,'' said Lewis, the faithful lapdog. The Remorseful Day (Macmillan) is not just a classic whodunnit, but a marvellous epitaph to the character Colin Dexter promoted to the top rank alongside Sherlock Holmes. Death has been the constant neighbour of

Gitta Sereny. The German Trauma retells and reflects on her encounters with Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, and Albert Speer, Hitler's architect. The conscience of mass murderers, a relentless witness, Sereny has written a masterpiece. Out of the Frying Pan (HarperCollins), the autobiography of Keith Floyd, is an unashamed celebration of life, even at its lowest ebb, and the tide has gone out more than once on the TV chef's fortunes. Floyd - Fanny Craddock meets Flashman - rampages across the pages. A lover of plonk, he often reveals himself to be a real plonker. Vintage stuff.

Cameron Simpson

n ROBERT W GUTMAN'S Mozart: A Cultural Biography (Secker Warburg) is a detailed study of the background to Mozart's career and a challenge to the view of him as almost a tragic figure in his later years. Certainly the liveliness of his personality is vividly obvious in Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life (Faber), a set of new translations by Robert Spaethling which convey their spontaneity

better than any previous edition. Moreover, Spaethling does not try to shield our delicate sensibilities from Mozart's remarkable gift for obscenity. The title of T E Carhart's The Piano Shop on the Left Bank (Chatto & Windus) precisely defines its subject. This is the sort of off-beat book one had begun to despair of ever seeing again from a mainstream publisher. Perhaps the company accountant was on leave the day it was commissioned; or perhaps he shares Carhart's fascination with pianos of every type.

GRAEME WOOLASTON

n The Scottish History Society, which exists to publish historical documents, has brought out no volume since 1995 but now comes storming back with George Buchanan, the Political Poetry (publications free to members), a body of work otherwise lost to view since the edition of 1725 from Leiden. Like much Latin verse - translations are provided - this is racy stuff. Suffice to say that Buchanan would not have supported repeal of Section

28, and bore besides a grudge against the

Portuguese. So, in a poem like Lusitania vel Sodomitas, sparks are bound to fly. Historical reconstruction at its most peerless comes in Margaret Gullan-Whur's Within Reason, a Life of Spinoza (Pimlico) and its bizarre, but riveting scenes of life among orthodox Jews in the Calvinist Amsterdam of the seventeenth century; they might have been imagined by Jorge Luis Borges. A skilful and gripping

historical novel of Edinburgh, intertwining

past and present, was James Robertson's The Fanatic (Fourth Estate).

Michael Fry

n Contrary to the critic ethic, I bought my book of the year. Reviews of Derek Mahon: Collected Poems (Gallery Press) are embargoed. I respect the poet and publisher's wishes. Fortunately, many of its lucid testimonies on foibles and fidelities are also present in Selected Poems (Penguin). In silent awe at the Collected, I loudly recommend the Selected. Evocations of the past are common factors in my fiction choices. Patrick McGrath's Martha Peake (Viking) explores British/American tenants of liberation. Brian Keenan's Turlough (Cape) allows musical release to define liberty's confines. John Banville's Eclipse (Picador) exposes memory's limitations. Poets Eva Bourke's Travels With Gondolpho (Dedalus) and Pauline Stainer's Parable Island (Bloodaxe ) conjure up images through integrity and an imaginative discipline with words. WJ McCormack's Fool Of The Family: a life of J M Synge (Weidenfeld

) reveals more about Ireland and drama than any comparable historical tract.

Hayden Murphy

n Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, and Chris Thornton (Mainstream) was a fairly easy choice as book of the year. As I said in my original review, it may well prove to be the defining book of the Northern Ireland troubles. The basic idea is simple enough. It records the dead of the conflict which has tormented Northern Ireland for the last three decades. But what had started out as a straightforward inventory of the dead grew into a short description of the circumstances, then grew again with descriptions of the victims, then expanded as the connections between the many victims were explored. The book ends up at over 900,000 words, a huge tome. This gigantic work is a fitting memorial to all those who are recorded in its 1630 pages. Invaluable as a reference work,

it is a unique and sobering historical document.

Stuart Crawford

n Prince of Princes. The Life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Weidenfeld) seems to me near-perfect as a historical biography: massively erudite, well-written, penetrating, shrewd, and witty. The author surely must have a glittering future ahead of him. There have been perhaps half a dozen literary and historical biographies in the excellent, but not quite brilliant, Montefiore class. Unable to choose between them, I plump instead for two volumes from an often despised genre, the movie biography. However, purists and snobs should sample two on offer and be prepared to eat their words, viz: Sergio Leone. Something To Do With Death by Christopher Frayling (Faber) and Print The Legend, The Life And Times Of John Ford by Scott Byman (Simon & Schuster). Both Ford and Leone conclusively demonstrated that the western is the greatest popular art form of the twentieth century and both have found

Boswells worthy of them.

Frank McLynn

n There have been lots of good books this year (including some still clamouring to be read).

So, reluctantly bypassing some fine biographies, I will mention just a few novels I have enjoyed. Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde (Fourth Estate), a large-scale fictional ''life'' of Marilyn Monroe, was dismissed by Julie Burchill in the Guardian but I found it impressive - poetically intense yet highly readable. Margot Livesey's compelling The Missing World (Secker & Warburg) is woven around a young woman's amnesia following an accident, and deftly manipulates the reader's sympathies. Funny and sad, tough yet touching. Having admired Dermot Healy's A Goat's Song, I fell eagerly on his new novel, Sudden Times (Harvill), where, in austere, yet haunting prose, Healy brilliantly creates the troubled aftermath of an Irishman's experiences as a labourer in London.

CAROL ANDERSON

n Kenan Malik's Man, Beast and Zombies (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) is an engrossing story of how sciences have veered from optimistic to pessimistic and diminished views of humanity. It vividly recounts intellectual battles from the Renaissance onwards over how we should see ourselves in relation to animals and machines. Another kind of fine yarn is Douglas Galbraith's novel, The Rising Sun (Picador), about the Darien Scheme. He brilliantly rescues resilience and ironies from the wreck of Scotland's colonial ambitions. Most sparkling of all,

though, is Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife (Picador), in which women's voices tell tales about themselves and their great and dim husbands. It is rare poetry

which combines scathing wit with delicious language and often subtle feelings. It's funny, too.

BOB TAIT

n ''Much nicer to make them laugh and keep it short,'' declared Muriel Spark. Aiding and Abetting (Viking) may be her shortest novel, and the laughter is sheer delight at her wit, poise, and economy. How the Parisian psychiatrist, herself keeper of a guilty secret, manages to foil the machinations of Lord ''Lucky'' Lucan makes a truly sparkling comedy. Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief (Cape) covers two centuries of Highland diaspora in Canada. Calum MacDonald sailed from Moidart in 1779 in search of land, and a present-day descendant traces the episodic fortunes of his extended family. A haunting novel of family and language, pain, misfortune, and solidarity. Hamish Henderson is much more than the writer of the ''Freedom Come-All-Ye''. He is a national institution, pioneering recorder of lost Scottish voices, translator, himself the strongest voice of Scotland at war. Buy his Collected

Poems and Songs (Curly Snake Publishing).

ISOBEL MURRAY

n Reading someone else's letters, and uncovering the views and gossip they meant to keep secret, gives a delightful guilty feeling of trespassing. H G Wells must be writhing still from Rebecca West's complaints of his treatment of her and their son in a letter to Bertrand Russell, contained in the splendid Selected Letters of Rebecca West, (Yale University Press). These are a much-needed reminder of how glorious a writer she was. There is an unexpected humanity displayed in the wicked Marquis de Sade's Letters From Prison (Harvil). He is hardly the stuff of martyrs, but the portrait in the correspondence with his wife of a mind at bay is unexpectedly moving. Arthur Miller's Echoes Down the Corridor (Methuen), a series of occasional pieces from the past six decades, are intellectually bracing, and a lesson in how to remain lucid and

decent even when faced with the worst of

political deviousness.

JOSEPH FARRELL

n The year has seen science writing across a huge spectrum from The Science of Laughter, according to Robert R Provine (Faber & Faber) to the The Science of Marijuana by Leslie L Iversen (Oxford University Press). Both might seem a bit flaky, but I would thoroughly

recommend Iversen's well-written, non-specialist discussion of the biological and social aspects of the weed. If and when I am struck down in my dotage I will risk its legal and

carcinogenic drawbacks to alleviate pain. But this is all a bit indulgent and perhaps we need Something New Under the Sun by J R McNeill (Allen Lane) as a sobering reminder of our impact on the environment. Refreshingly, McNeill does not preach, but lets us draw our own conclusions - you might even give the car a rest and pump the old bike tyres up. My choice however, is Jane Goodall's Africa in My Blood (Houghton Mifflin) to bring good cheer. Letters home tell her autobiographical story as it unfolds - from deflecting the unwanted attentions of middle-aged men and those of the world's media, to her excitement at discovering chimp behaviour in the wild - inspiring stuff.

Douglas Palmer

n In a year that saw much exciting work by new writers, it was still the big guns who won me over. Not a fan of Martin Amis's fiction, I loved his memoir Experience (Cape). More than just a recall of youth, Amis wrote movingly about father Kingsley and cousin Lucy Partington, a victim of serial murderer Fred West, who haunted the book. Jeanette Winterson's internet love affair, The.Powerbook (Cape) saw what many considered a return to form; some of us believe she never lost it. In a good year for non-fiction, The Journals of Sylvia Plath (edited by Karen V Kukil, Faber) and the more uneven biography Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy were illuminating and made for fascinating reading. Lastly, in spite of resisting publishers' excesses over their latest signings, I succumbed to Helen DeWitt's linguistic labyrinth of a novel, The Last Samurai (Chatto). It was worth the hype.

Lesley McDowell

n Along with satisfying new novels from Atwood, Atkinson, and Spark, I liked the beautifully written, grave, and careful novel Golden Deeds (Picador) by New Zealand writer Catherine Chidgey, James Robertson's historic/contemporary Scottish commentary The Fanatic (Fourth Estate), and Zadie Smith's spry, sprawling, wittingly multicultural White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton). Lorna Sage's

cultural and literary criticism has always been expansive and pioneering, and Bad Blood (Fourth Estate), her memoir of growing up a bookish, clever, postwar girl in rural Herefordshire, is both these things. Sage is a great writer and the book is atmospheric, rich, witty, and moving. I read it in one swallow and it made my summer. Isobel Murray's biography, Jessie Kesson: Writing her Life (Canongate), was unputdownable and brought its extraordinary subject to extraordinary life. And 2000, for me, was the year of Alasdair Gray's Book of Prefaces (Bloomsbury): a communal honouring of beginnings, a triumph of a book.

Ali Smith

n Errol Flynn might be described as a bad man but a great star. For him there were no peccadilloes, only full-blown sins. This aspect of his life dominates David Bret's book, Errol Flynn: Satan's Angel (Robson Books). But Bret does give Flynn credit for his acting latent in such films as The Dawn Patrol and The Sun Also Rises and his judgments on Flynn's career are balanced. I have always admired Ted Allbury's thrillers and The Assets (Hodder and Stoughton) does not disappoint. In brisk and spare fashion, it tells the story of Joe Maguire, a basically decent man prepared to fight evil with evil. Hitler continues to fascinate and appal 55 years after his death. How could it be otherwise? The enormity of what Hitler and his cohorts did, first in Germany itself and then more widely in Europe, is staggering. Ian Kershaw's Hitler: Nemesis 1936-1945 (Allen Lane, Penguin Press) is the latest study

and is likely to prove the last word. Not to be ignored.

Andrew Fisher

n Although written under the shadow of HIV, the last volume of memoirs from film-maker and painter Derek Jarman, Smiling in Slow Motion (Century), is a book that roars with life. Jarman rages against the dying of the light in these pages and what emerges is a vision of a vital, angry, funny, and wilful man whose fierce eloquence only fades when death is almost upon him. Remarkable. The year's best novels arrived early in January. George P Pelecanos completed his Washington Quartet with Shame The Devil (Gollancz) which worked as both a top-notch thriller and an acute examination of how grief and loss can colour and stain our lives. A month later, Douglas Coupland gave us two minor-grade celebrities seeking to reinvent themselves in his latest trawl through America's cultural detritus, Miss Wyoming (Flamingo), a valentine to that persistent American belief in the possibility of transformation.

Imagine The Great Gatsby on uppers and you're almost there.

Teddy Jamieson

n THREE from across the Atlantic: Philip Roth's The Human Stain (Cape) is the work of a writer who simply gets better and becomes increasingly unafraid to take on the big, uncomfortable subjects. Joseph Mitchell's Bottom of the Harbor (Cape) is reportage of the highest rank. Mitchell did not write much but what he did commands attention. Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief (Cape) is a beautifully crafted novel with a strong Scottish resonance.

Hugh MacDonald

n I have devoured everything of Margaret Atwood's and therefore can't fail to recommend her latest, The Blind Assassin. The novel intertwines the story of the Chase family with the events of Laura Chase's notorious and sexually explicit novel published after her suicide. As ever, Atwood is insightful, intelligent, and eminently readable. The Lawnmower Celebrity by Ben Hatch, a sort of Adrian Mole with depth and emotion, is another highlight of the year. The novel is a witty, moving account of teenager Jay's

hapless progress from one unsuitable job to another, various relationship problems, and struggle to come to terms with the recent death of his mother. Finally, I admit to being as eager as any 10-year-old for the publication of J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Bloomsbury). Despite the hype, it didn't disappoint. Every intrigue, potion, and secret passage had me spellbound - magic for everyone's inner child.

GILLIAN DORRICOTT