ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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Six on the best
Some of Britain's top poets tell ANDY CROFT which collections impressed them over the last 12 months
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Gerda Stevenson
A wealth of poetry has absorbed me this year. Meg Bateman's fine Transparencies (Polygon) is a Gaelic-English volume exploring memory, people and place, whose centre piece is a virtuosic tribute to the mythology of ships.
Each image of Sharon Olds' searing Stag's Leap (Cape) brands itself on retina and heart - how will I ever forget the "Tiny Siren" found by accident in the washing machine?
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event