Filed under: Music, Movies, Television, News, Awards

As expected, Lee Daniels' critically acclaimed film 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' tops this year's nominees at the 41st annual NAACP Image Awards. The film scored eight nods on Wednesday morning, including best film, best director and best screenplay.

(Check out Wilson Morales' NAACP Image Award run down in It's All Reel)

In addition to honoring Hollywood's elite, the multicultural event will also celebrate the outstanding achievements of those within television and music. Jay-Z and Maxwell respectively lead their recording categories with five nominations each, while Mary J. Blige has three.

ABC's medical series 'Greg's Anatomy' leads the television pack with six nominations. The 41st annual NAACP Image Awards is scheduled to air live on Feb. 26 on FOX.

Below is a complete list of nominees.
THE 41st NAACP IMAGE AWARDS NOMINATIONS

TELEVISION CATEGORIES

Outstanding Comedy Series
o. '30 Rock' (NBC)
o. 'Everybody Hates Chris' (CW)
o. 'Glee' (FOX)
o. 'Tyler Perry's House of Payne' (TBS)
o. 'Ugly Betty' (ABC)

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series
o. Daryl "Chill" Mitchell - 'Brothers' (FOX)
o. Donald Faison - 'Scrubs' (NBC)
o. Dulé Hill - 'Psych' (USA Network)
o. LaVan Davis - 'Tyler Perry's House of Payne' (TBS)
o. Tyler James Williams - 'Everybody Hates Chris' (CW)

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series
o. America Ferrera - 'Ugly Betty' (ABC)
o. Cassi Davis - 'Tyler Perry's House of Payne' (TBS)
o. CCH Pounder - 'Brothers' (FOX)
o. Sherri Shepherd - 'Sherri' (Lifetime)
o. Tichina Arnold - 'Everybody Hates Chris' (CW)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
o. Lamman Rucker - 'Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns' (TBS)
o. Lance Gross - 'Tyler Perry's House of Payne' (TBS)
o. Larenz Tate - 'Rescue Me' (FX)
o. Malcolm-Jamal Warner - 'Sherri' (Lifetime)
o. Tracy Morgan - '30 Rock' (NBC)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
o. Ana Ortiz - 'Ugly Betty' (ABC)
o. Keshia Knight Pulliam - 'Tyler Perry's House of Payne' (TBS)
o. Tisha Campbell-Martin - 'Rita Rocks' (Lifetime)
o. Vanessa Williams - 'Ugly Betty' (ABC)
o. Wendy Raquel Robinson - 'The Game' (CW)

Outstanding Drama Series
o. 'Cold Case' (CBS)
o. 'Grey's Anatomy' (ABC)
o. 'HawthoRNe' (TNT)
o. 'Lincoln Heights' (ABC Family)
o. 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' (HBO)

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series
o. Anthony Anderson - 'Law & Order' (NBC)
o. Hill Harper - 'CSI: NY' (CBS)
o. LL Cool J - 'NCIS: Los Angeles' (CBS)
o. Laurence Fishburne - 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' (CBS)
o. Taye Diggs - 'Private Practice' (ABC)

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series
o. Chandra Wilson - 'Grey's Anatomy' (ABC)
o. Jada Pinkett Smith - 'HawthoRNe' (TNT)
o. Jill Scott - 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' (HBO)
o. Regina King - 'Southland' (NBC)
o. Sandra Oh - 'Grey's Anatomy' (ABC)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
o. Corey Reynolds - 'The Closer' (TNT)
o. Delroy Lindo - 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' (NBC)
o. James Pickens, Jr. - 'Grey's Anatomy' (ABC)
o. Mekhi Phifer - 'Lie to Me' (FOX)
o. Rocky Carroll - 'NCIS' (CBS)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
o. Anika Noni Rose - 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' (HBO)
o. Audra McDonald - 'Private Practice' (ABC)
o. Gabrielle Union - 'Flash Forward' (ABC)
o. Jurnee Smollett - 'Friday Night Lights' (NBC)
o. S. Epatha Merkerson - 'Law & Order' (NBC)

Outstanding Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special
o. 'America' (Lifetime)
o. 'Brick City' (Sundance)
o. 'Georgia O'Keefe' (Lifetime)
o. 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. 'Relative Stranger' (Hallmark)

Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special
o. Cuba Gooding Jr. - 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. Eriq La Salle - 'Relative Stranger' (Hallmark)
o. Gus Hoffman - 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. Jaishon Fisher - 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. Philip Johnson - 'America' (Lifetime)

Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special
o. Aunjanue Ellis - 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. Cicely Tyson - 'Relative Stranger' (Hallmark)
o. Kimberly Elise - 'Gifted Hands' (TNT)
o. Rosie O'Donnell - 'America' (Lifetime)
o. Ruby Dee - 'America' (Lifetime)

Outstanding Actor in a Daytime Drama Series
o. Bryton James - 'The Young and The Restless' (CBS)
o. Cassius Willis - 'The Young and The Restless' (CBS)
o. Cornelius Smith, Jr. - 'All My Children' (ABC)
o. Terrell Tilford - 'One Life To Live' (ABC)
o. Texas Battle - 'The Bold and the Beautiful' (CBS)

Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series
o. Daphne Duplaix - 'One Life to Live' (ABC)
o. Debbi Morgan - 'All My Children' (ABC)
o. Eva Marcelle - 'The Young and the Restless' (CBS)
o. Tatyana Ali - 'The Young and The Restless' (CBS)
o. Tonya Lee Williams - 'The Young and the Restless' (CBS)

Outstanding News/ Information - (Series or Special)
o. 'Anderson Cooper 360: President Obama's African Journey' (CNN)
o. 'CNN Presents: Reclaiming the Dream 2'" (CNN)
o. 'The Inauguration of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States' (BET)
o. 'Judge Mathis' (Syndicated)
o. 'Leading Women: India.Arie, Dr. Maya Angelou' (Centric)

Outstanding Talk Series
o. 'Lopez Tonight' (TBS)
o. 'The Mo'Nique Show' (BET)
o. 'The Tyra Banks Show' (CW)
o. 'The View' (ABC)
o. 'The Wanda Sykes Show' (FOX)

Outstanding Reality Series
o. 'American Idol 8' (FOX)
o. 'America's Next Top Model' (CW)
o. 'Dancing With the Stars' (ABC)
o. 'Extreme Makeover' (ABC)
o. 'Real Housewives of Atlanta' (Bravo)

Outstanding Variety - (Series or Special)
o. 'BET Awards 2009' (BET)
o. 'Bill Cosby: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor' (PBS)
o. 'Michael Jackson Memorial Service' (ABC, BET, CNN, MTV, NBC)
o. 'Wanda Sykes: I'ma Be Me' (HBO)
o. 'We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial' (HBO)

Outstanding Children's Program
o. 'The Backyardigans - The Action Elves Save Christmas' (Nickelodeon)
o. 'Dora The Explorer: Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure' (Nickelodeon)
o. 'Go, Diego, Go: Diego Reunites Hippopotamus and Oxpecker' (Nickelodeon)
o. 'True Jackson, VP' (Nickelodeon)
o. 'Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie' (Disney Channel)

Outstanding Performance in a Youth/Children's Program - (Series or Special)
o. Caitlin Sanchez - 'Dora the Explorer' (Nickelodeon)
o. Keke Palmer - 'True Jackson, VP' (Nickelodeon)
o. LaShawn Jeffries - 'The Backyardigans' (Nickelodeon)
o. Nick Cannon - 'TeenNick HALO Awards' (TeenNick)
o. Selena Gomez - 'Wizards of Waverly Place' (Disney Channel)

RECORDING CATEGORIES

Outstanding New Artist
o. Jeremih (Def Jam)
o. Keri Hilson (Mosley Music Group/Zone 4 Inc./Interscope Records)
o. K'Jon (Universal Republic Records)
o. Kristinia DeBarge (Def Jam)
o. Melanie Fiona (SRC/Universal/Motown)

Outstanding Male Artist
o. Anthony Hamilton (SoSo Def/Jive Records)
o. Charlie Wilson (Jive Label Group)
o. Jay-Z (Atlantic Records)
o. Maxwell (Columbia Records)
o. Ne-Yo (Def Jam)

Outstanding Female Artist
o. Alicia Keys (Columbia Records)
o. India.Arie (Universal Republic Records)
o. Mary J. Blige (Matriarch/Geffen)
o. Rihanna (Def Jam)
o. Whitney Houston (Artista Records)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration
o. 3 Mo' Divas (MariMo' Music Inc.)
o. The Black Eyed Peas (Interscope Records)
o. Day26 (Bad Boy Records)
o. Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys (Atlantic Records)
o. Jay-Z featuring Rihanna & Kanye West (Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Jazz Album
o. 'Detroit'" - Gerald Wilson Orchestra (Mack Avenue Records)
o. 'He and She' - Wynton Marsalis (Blue Note Records)
o. 'Kind of Brown' - Christian McBride & Inside Straight (Mack Avenue Records)
o. 'Poetically Justified' - Marcus Johnson (Three Keys Music)
o. 'The Real Thing' - Vanessa Williams (Concord Records)

Outstanding Gospel Album - (Traditional or Contemporary)
o. 'A City Called Heaven' - Shirley Caesar (Light Records)
o. 'How I Got Over' - Vickie Winans (Destiny Joy)
o. 'Love Unstoppable' - Fred Hammond (Verity Records)
o. 'Still' - BeBe & CeCe Winans (B & C Records)
o. 'We Are All One: Live in Detroit' - Donnie McClurkin (Verity Records)

Outstanding World Music Album
o. '11:11' - Rodrigo y Gabriela (ATO Records/Red)
o. 'Black President' - Sila and the Afrofunk Experience (Visila Records)
o. 'Morabeza' - Maria de Barros (Sheer Legacy [Sheer Group South African Label])
o. 'ReCreation' - Zap Mama (Heads Up International/Concord Music Group)
o. 'Seya' - Oumou Sangare (Nonesuch/World Circuit)

Outstanding Music Video
o. 'Blame It' - Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain (J Records/MBK Entertainment)
o. 'Boom Boom Pow' - The Black Eyed Peas (Interscope Records)
o. 'I Look to You' - Whitney Houston (Arista)
o. 'Pretty Wings' - Maxwell (Columbia Records)
o. 'Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart' - Alicia Keys (J Records/MBK Entertainment)

Outstanding Song
o. 'Bad Habits' - Maxwell (Columbia Records)
o. 'Blame It' - Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain (J Records/MBK Entertainment)
o. 'Empire State of Mind' - Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys (Atlantic Records)
o. 'God in Me' - Mary Mary (Columbia Records)
o. 'Pretty Wings' - Maxwell (Columbia Records)

Outstanding Album
o. 'The Blueprint 3' - Jay-Z (Atlantic Records)
o. 'BLACKsummers'night' - Maxwell (Columbia Records)
o. 'The Element of Freedom' - Alicia Keys (J Records/MBK Entertainment)
o. 'Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel' - Mariah Carey (Def Jam)
o. 'Stronger With Each Tear' - Mary J. Blige (Matriarch/Geffen)

LITERATURE CATEGORIES

Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction
o. 'Basketball Jones' - E. Lynn Harris (deceased) (Doubleday)
o. 'Before I Forget' - Leonard Pitts, Jr. (Agate Bolden)
o. 'Life is Short But Wide' - J. California Cooper (Doubleday)
o. 'The Book of Night Women' - Marlon James Riverhead Books)
o. 'The Long Fall' - Walter Mosley (Riverhead Books)

Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction
o. 'Brain Surgeon: A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters With Mortality and Miracles' - Arnold Mann
with Keith Black, MD (Grand Central Publishing)
o. 'Family Affair: What It Means to be African American Today' - Gil L. Robertson, IV (Agate
Bolden)
o. 'Freedom in My Heart: Voices From the United States National Slavery Museum' - Cynthia
Jacobs Carter (National Geographic Books)
o. 'In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past' -
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Crown)
o. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis' - Al Gore (Rodale Inc.)

Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author
o. '3rd Generation Country' - BeNeca Ward (Xlibris Corporation)
o. 'A Question of Freedom' - R. Dwayne Betts (Avery Books)
o. 'Black Water Rising' - Attica Locke (Harper)
o. 'Kiss the Sky: A Novel' - Farai Chideya (Atria Books)
o. 'Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange' - Amanda Smyth (Three Rivers Press)

Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Auto-Biography
o. 'Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud' - Dr. Cornel West (SmileyBooks)
o. 'Michelle Obama' - Deborah Willis (W. W. Norton)
o. 'POPS: A Life of Louis' - Terry Teachout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
o. 'Shooting Stars' - LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger (The Penguin Press)
o. 'Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne' - James Gavin (Atria Books)

Outstanding Literary Work - Instructional
o. 'Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man' - Steve Harvey (Amistad)
o. 'The Conversation: How Black Men & Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships' - Hill
Harper (Gotham Books)
o. 'Down to Business' - Clara Villarosa with Alicia Villarosa (Avery Books)
o. 'Start Where You Are' - Chris Gardner (Amistad)
o. 'Your Money or Your Life' - Alvin Hall (Atria Books)

Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry
o. 'Bicycles' - Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow)
o. 'Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry' - Camille Dungy (The University of Georgia Press)
o. 'Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem' - Mitchell L. H. Douglas (Red Hen Press)
o. 'Mixology: National Poetry Series' - Adrian Matejka (Penguin Group [USA])
o. 'Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall' - Melba Joyce Boyd (Wayne State University Press)

Outstanding Literary Work - Children
o. 'Child of the Civil Rights Movement' - Paula Young Shelton (Random House Children's Books)
o. 'Negro Speaks of Rivers' - Langston Hughes (Author), E.B. Lewis (Illustrator) (Disney-Jump at the Sun/Disney Book Group)
o. 'Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration of Rosa, Barack, and the Pioneers of Change' - Michelle Cook (Bloomsbury Children's Books)
o. 'Peeny Butter Fudge' - Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison (Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
o. 'Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Toeshoe Trouble' - Whoopi Goldberg (Disney-Jump at the Sun/Disney Book Group)

Outstanding Literary Work - Youth/Teens
o. 'Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice' - Phillip Hoose (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group/Farrar Straus and Giroux)
o. 'Just Another Hero' - Sharon Draper (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
o. 'Mare's War' - Tanita S. Davis (Random House Children's Books)
o. 'Michelle Obama: Meet the First Lady' - David Bergen Brophy (Collins-An Imprint of
HarperCollins Children's Books)
o. 'Rock and the River' - Kekla Magoon (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)

MOTION PICTURE CATEGORIES

Outstanding Motion Picture
o. 'The Blind Side' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. 'Invictus' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. 'Michael Jackson's: This Is It' (Columbia Pictures)
o. 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. 'The Princess and the Frog' (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture
o. Denzel Washington - 'The Taking of Pelham 123' (Columbia Pictures)
o. Idris Elba - 'Obsessed' (Screen Gems)
o. Jamie Foxx - 'Law Abiding Citizen' (Overture Films)
o. Morgan Freeman - 'Invictus' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. Quinton Aaron - 'The Blind Side' (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture
o. Anika Noni Rose - 'The Princess and the Frog' (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
o. Gabourey Sidibe - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push'by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. Sandra Bullock - 'The Blind Side' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. Sophie Okonedo - 'Skin' (Jour De Fete Films)
o. Taraji P. Henson - 'Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself' (Lionsgate)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
o. Adam Rodriguez - 'Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself' (Lionsgate)
o. Anthony Mackie - 'The Hurt Locker' (Summit Entertainment)
o. Chiwetel Ejiofor - '2012' (Columbia Pictures)
o. Danny Glover - '2012' (Columbia Pictures)
o. Lenny Kravitz - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
o. Alfre Woodard - 'American Violet' (Universal Pictures)
o. Mariah Carey - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. Mo'Nique - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. Paula Patton - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. Zoe Saldana - 'Avatar' (Paramount Pictures)

Outstanding Independent Motion Picture
o. 'American Violet' (Samuel Goldwyn Company)
o. 'Amreeka' (National Geographic Entertainment)
o. 'Endgame' (Montery Entertainment)
o. 'Medicine for Melancholy' (IFC Films)
o. 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)

Outstanding Foreign Motion Picture
o. 'The Maid' (Elephant Eye Films)
o. 'Rudo y Cursi' (Sony Pictures Classics)
o. 'Sin Nombre' (Focus Features)
o. 'Skin' (Jour De Fete Films)
o. 'The Stoning of Soraya M.' (Mpower Pictures)

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY

Outstanding Documentary (Theatrical or Television)
o. 'Capitalism: A Love Story' (Overture Films)
o. 'Crips and Bloods: Made in America' (Gravitas Ventures)
o. 'Crude' (First Run Features)
o. 'Good Hair' (Roadside Attractions)
o. 'More than a Game' (Lionsgate)

WRITING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series
o. Alyson Fouse - 'Brothers' - Meet Mike Trainor (FOX)
o. Hallsted Sullivan with Warren Lieberstein - 'The Office' - Café Disco (NBC)
o. Kenny Smith - 'The Game' - The Wedding (CW)
o. Marc Willmore - 'The Simpsons' - The Good, The Sad, & The Drugly (FOX)
o. Saladin Patterson & James Roday - 'Psych' - High Top Fade Out (USA Network)

Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series
o. Alexander Woo - 'True Blood' - Beyond Here Lies Nothin (HBO)
o. Kathleen McGhee-Anderson - 'Lincoln Heights' - Home Again (ABC Family)
o. Sara Hess - 'House' - The Greater Good (FOX)
o. Shonda Rhimes - 'Grey's Anatomy' - What a Difference A Day Makes (ABC)
o. Zoanne Clack - 'Grey's Anatomy' - Stand By Me (ABC)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Theatrical or Television)
o. Anthony Peckham - 'Invictus' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. Geoffrey Fletcher - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. John Lee Hancock - 'The Blind Side' (Warner Bros. Pictures)
o. Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker - 'Notorious' (Fox Searchlight)
o. Tyler Perry - 'Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself' (Lionsgate)

DIRECTING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series
o. Ali LeRoi - 'Everybody Hates Chris' - Everybody Hates The G.E.D. (CW)
o. Justin Lin - 'Community' - Introduction to Statistics (NBC)
o. Ken Whittingham - '30 Rock' - The Funcooker (NBC)
o. Michael Shultz - 'Drop Dead Diva' - Second Chances (Lifetime)
o. Reggie Hudlin - 'The Office' - Koi Pond (NBC)

Outstanding Directing in a Dramatic Series
o. Chandra Wilson - 'Grey's Anatomy' - Give Peace a Chance (ABC)
o. Edward James Olmos - 'Battlestar Galactica' - Islanded in a Stream of Stars (Syfy)
o. Ernest Dickerson - 'Dexter' - Road Kill (Showtime)
o. Kevin Sullivan - 'Lincoln Heights' - Aftershock (ABC Family)
o. Paris Barclay - 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' - Coup de Grace (CBS)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Theatrical or Television)
o. F. Gary Gray - 'Law Abiding Citizen' (Overture Films)
o. George Tillman, Jr. - 'Notorious' (Fox Searchlight)
o. Lee Daniels - 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (Lionsgate)
o. Scott Sanders - 'Black Dynamite' (Apparition)
o. Spike Lee - 'Passing Strange: The Movie' (IFC Films/Sundance Selects)

 

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From cosmology to children's picture-books, our reviewers give a guide to the best of the publishers' lists for the first six months of the new year

JANUARY

Fiction

The first big novel of the year is Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence (Faber), both a tale of obsessional love and a stunning panorama of Istanbul society rich and poor, traditional and westernised, over the past three decades. It comes with a real museum attached: Pamuk plans a house of ephemera in which to display the memorabilia of his hero's affair and of Istanbul life, from ferry tickets to quince grinders.

EL Doctorow creates another museum of the moment in Homer and Langley (Little, Brown), based on the lives of the Collyer brothers, eccentric hoarders who rarely left their New York townhouse and were eventually killed by their own clutter. Doctorow finds in their decaying mansion a weird and wonderful platform from which to view a century of American life.

The trend for posthumous publication continues with John Wyndham's Plan for Chaos (Penguin). In this companion piece to Day of the Triffids, the suspicious deaths of a series of identical women reveal a plot to clone a master race. Meanwhile, Blacklands (Bantam) heralds a fresh new voice in crime: Belinda Bauer inhabits the mind of her 12-year-old hero, struggling to tease the whereabouts of his uncle's body from an imprisoned child-killer, with uncanny conviction.

Justine Jordan

Science history

Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson (HarperPress). On a dismal night in London 350 years ago, a group of intellectuals sat down and created a society for the accumulation of knowledge. Since then, the Royal Society has been at the heart of scientific endeavour. Bryson's anniversary collection of articles by Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes and others tells the story of human advancement, from the pioneering expeditions of Captain Cook and dubious experimental medical procedures to Newton's theory of light, splitting the atom and the discovery of the DNA double helix.

Ian Sample

Memoir

Must You Go, by Antonia Fraser (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). This memoir of one of the great literary marriages of our time is based on diaries Fraser kept during her time with Harold Pinter. It promises to shed new light on the germination of his plays as well as on their lives together. "In essence," Fraser writes, "it is a love story and as with many love stories, the beginning and the end, the first light and the twilight, are dealt with more fully than the high noon in between."

Claire Armitstead

Poetry

Love Poems, by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador). The inaugural collection of Carol Ann Duffy's laureateship explores a theme that has long lain at the core of her poetry; the publication of her 2005 narrative of a relationship, Rapture, saw her anointed as our generation's premier anatomist of love. This collection unites some of her greatest love poems with more recent efforts. "All poems are love poems," she said at last year's Hay festival. "Poetry can offer consolation, it can be angry and potent, but all these poems, these moments in language, come from love."

Sarah Crown

A Hospital Odyssey, by Gwyneth Lewis (Bloodaxe). In her first collection since stepping down as the first national poet of Wales, Gwyneth Lewis follows the odyssey of Maris, whose husband Hardy has been diagnosed with cancer (Lewis's own husband faced the same news some years earlier). Somewhere in the hospital she loses him, and her search metamorphoses into a descent through wards and corridors populated by a fantastical cast of fickle physicians, anthropomorphised diseases, party-going microbes – and the shade of Aneurin Bevan – posing fundamental questions about the nature of health and healthcare. SC

Music

The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece, by Eric Siblin (Harvill Secker). Eric Siblin spent years as a rock critic before suddenly falling under the spell of Bach's Cello Suites. It wasn't just the way the music sounded, but its backstory that so intrigued him. The Cello Suites had lain forgotten until Pablo Casals famously popularised them in the 20th century. In crisp, business-like prose Siblin explores the source of both his and Casals's fascination with some of Bach's most challenging music.

Kathryn Hughes

Economics

Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, by John Lanchester (Allen Lane). How did Royal Bank of Scotland get to be not just the biggest bank, but the biggest company in the world? How could so much smart money chase such stupid risks? With wit and fury novelist John Lanchester unpacks the dizzying complexities of the financial industry to provide what promises – from advance glimpses in Lanchester's journalism – to be the year's most lucid and illuminating guide to the credit crunch. JJ

Children's fiction

Enchanted Glass, by Diana Wynne Jones (HarperCollins). This shows how fleet of foot fantasy can be even with a huge cast and a complex plot. Magician Jocelyn Brandon dies at a great age, leaving everything to his grandson. Andrew inherits a house with unruly and difficult staff and magic suffusing it all. When orphaned Aidan arrives, seeking protection from extreme forces, Andrew has to get a grip on the magic – which means finding the set of instructions that seems to be missing. At the heart of all is the colourful, stained glass window in the kitchen . . . (9+)

Julia Eccleshare

FebruaRY

Fiction

A bleak book for a grim month: but Jon McGregor's Even the Dogs (Bloomsbury), in which a chorus of the drugged and dispossessed tell their stories, is unmissable. As the state begins its investigation into the body of an anonymous alcoholic, we get fragmentary glimpses of the lives the state looks away from: McGregor's prose is unflinching yet luminous. Joshua Ferris also examines physical degredation and mysterious compulsion in The Unnamed (Viking), in which a man's irresistible urge to walk makes him a stranger to his family and himself: the book is as hard to pin down as its hero, yet as readable as The Corrections.

Memoir fuelled one of Martin Amis's best books, Experience, and his much-anticipated new novel, The Pregnant Widow (Jonathan Cape), also promises an autobiographical flavour. In an Italian castle, during the hot summer of 1970, a biting comedy of manners unfurls as half a dozen young people – including a brilliant English literature student "clogged up with the English novel and high on lust", seeking to turn women's lib to his own ends – enact the brutal and confusing new rules of the sexual revolution.

Andrea Levy follows up 2004's hugely successful Small Island with The Long Song (Headline Review), moving back from Windrush-era Britain to the last days of slavery in Jamaica; it's told in the voice of Miss July, born a slave on a sugar plantation at the beginning of the 19th century. Other historical revolutions feature in Peter Carey's playful riff on the life of Alexander de Tocqueville, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber), in which a French aristocrat escapes Europe's guillotines for the New World.

Elsewhere, discover the work of Nobel laureate JMG Le Clezio with the first English translation of the book considered his masterpiece, Desert (Atlantic), which spans the 20th century from the tribes of north Africa to refugees on the streets of Marseilles; while Paul Murray's outrageously enjoyable, bittersweet Skippy Dies (Hamish Hamilton) is an Irish boarding school comedy to savour. JJ

Philosophy

What Darwin Got Wrong, by Jerry Fodor & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Profile). In autumn 2007, the philosopher Jerry Fodor caused a stir with an article in the London Review of Books entitled "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings", which attacked the concept of "natural selection" in evolutionary theory. Philosophers and biologists subsequently wrote in to the LRB's letters pages expressing puzzlement: perhaps Fodor had overlooked this or that, or fastened too doggedly on a form of words that Darwin himself, after all, had called "shorthand"? Interested parties have not much longer to wait for a fuller argument.

Steven Poole

Art

Van Gogh, by Tim Hilton (HarperPress). Van Gogh's life and work has tended to be overshadowed by his penchant for self-harm. So it's easy to forget that when he wasn't cutting off bits of himself he was painting like a fury, producing the paintings and drawings which changed the direction of modern art. Tim Hilton, who dedicated years to producing a definitive biography of John Ruskin, now focuses that same close attention on Van Gogh. The result is the fullest and most satisfactory life of the artist yet to be published. KH

Feminism

Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter (Virago). This long-awaited book from the author of The New Feminism, who is also a leading campaigner on behalf of women refugees, promises to offer a rallying cry for the post-feminist era – an age when hard-won liberties are being sacrificed to a market-driven, sexualised vision of what women are today. CA

Flight

Fly by Wire, by William Langewiesche (Penguin). When Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed his plane safely in the Hudson river last January after the engines were taken out by geese, he was hailed as a hero pilot of the old school. Here, the reporter (and pilot) William Langewiesche promises a detailed account of the incident, tied in to a more general history of the increasing automation of aircraft. He argues that "fly-by-wire" systems helped Sullenberger, but that they also make him one of the last of a dying breed, sucking the glamour out of the piloting profession. SP

Philosophy

Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence, by Raymond Tallis (Atlantic). The philosopher, poet and former medical scientist was lauded for his previous books on the hand, the head and the mind. The latest bodily examination brings us to the forefinger and what Raymond Tallis sees as its defining role in humanity and human nature. From the touching fingertips of God and man in the Sistine Chapel, Tallis's meditation on the index finger explores how a seemingly insignificant ability influenced the evolution of our earliest ancestors and set us apart from other primates. IS

Psychology

How Many Friends Does One Person Need? by Robin Dunbar (Faber). Regardless of what Facebook has us believe, our poor little brains cannot cope with more than 150 friends. Such is the limit imposed by the size of our neocortex, says Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary biologist and anthropologist at Oxford University. But this is only one quirk of evolution that colours our everyday lives; our behaviour is bound by our evolutionary history in complex and far–reaching ways. Dunbar's latest delves into the experiments that explain why men talk and women gossip, why all babies are born premature and why monogamy is a drain on the brain. IS

Poetry

The Wrecking Light, by Robin Robertson (Picador, £8.99). Robertson follows up his 2006 Forward prizewinning collection, Swithering, with a new volume which fishes back through Greek mythology with pacey retellings of stories from Ovid, and translations of Pablo Neruda and Eugenio Montale. His poems are haunted: by ghosts, by ambiguities, by the pull of the past, but at root, the collection offers a cogent, unflinching examination of the fallibility of the human world, set against nature's splendour and spaciousness. SC

Children's fiction

Fighting Ruben Wolfe, by Markus Zuzak (Definitions). Two brothers take to prize fighting after their father loses his job. Having practised together, one with the left-hand glove and one with the right, the two are both good, although Ruben is always just that little bit better. Cameron is always there to cheer his brother on, but what will happen when the two of them meet? Written with a spare, gritty authenticity, this is a compelling and refreshingly brief novel by the author of the bestselling The Book Thief. (11+) JE

Blue Chameleon, by Emily Gravett (Macmillan). A lonely chameleon turns himself into all manner of things in an effort to find friends. But friendship takes more than just blending in. How the blue chameleon finds happiness is a glorious exploration of colours and shapes. (2+) JE

TimeRiders, by Alex Scarrow (Puffin). Operating across a century, three young adults are recruited by a secret agency to fulfil a single mission; becoming timeriders, they must fix broken history. The job can wait no longer as those in the present think nothing of changing the past. A thriller full of spectacular effects. (10+) JE

March

Fiction

Ian McEwan's Solar (Jonathan Cape) grapples with climate change, as a burned-out, philandering physicist sees his chance to save the planet in a novel that promises comedy as well as crisis, while Rose Tremain follows her Orange prizewinner The Road Home with Trespass (Chatto & Windus), in which family resentments and cultures collide in an isolated corner of France. There's an eerie novella from Don DeLillo, Point Omega (Picador), which juxtaposes the metaphysical musings of a war adviser with the high-concept cinematography of video art, all considered under the unforgiving sky of the American desert.

A debut from a former bond trader, This Bleeding City by Alex Preston (Faber), is the first of several novels this year to confront hubris, moneymaking and the emotional and philosophical ramifications of the crash. Look out too for Marilyn Chin's debut Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (Hamish Hamilton), a blend of magical realism and savvy modernity about growing up Chinese in America. JJ

Economics

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis (Allen Lane). Explanations of the financial crisis have not been thin on the ground so far, but The Big Short looks like a perfect storm of brilliant, informed writer (author of the classic Wall Street memoir, Liar's Poker) meeting big, important subject. If his recent articles in Vanity Fair – on the collapse of Iceland, and on the head of AIG – are anything to go by, it will be a gourmet blend of illumination and schadenfreude. SP

Cosmology

Are We Alone in the Universe? by Paul Davies (Allen Lane). Paul Davies is an imaginative scientist and a brilliant writer for whom the title question is not so easily answered. As chair of the highly speculative Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) post-detection taskgroup, Davies wonders if we've been looking for aliens in all the wrong places. Instead of pointing our antennae to the heavens and listening out for interstellar broadcasts, we should turn our sights elsewhere. Perhaps ET has buried messages in the DNA of animals around us? How else might an advanced civilisation leave us a note? IS

Reportage

Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton). The Dave Eggers who brought you What Is the What – the life story of a Sudanese "lost boy" – is back with this account of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as experienced by a Syrian-born painter and decorator, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, and his American wife Kathy. "It's the stuff of great narrative non-fiction," said the New York Times. After spending six days paddling around the flooded city rescuing people, Zeitoun was arrested at gunpoint in what becomes a parable of human compassion and resilience in the face of official incompetence. CA

April

Fiction

Philip Pullman subverts the founding narrative of the Christian church with a new take on the gospels, "part novel, part history, part fairytale", in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Canongate). Helen Dunmore furnishes a sequel to her bestselling The Siege, The Betrayal (Fig Tree), which sees Leningrad in the early 1950s suffering under Stalin and recovering from war, while writer's writer Mick Jackson may have his breakthrough with The Widow's Tale (Faber), in which a newly bereaved woman holes up on the Norfolk coast to consider her past and her possible future. Roddy Doyle completes his trilogy of an IRA veteran in changing times with The Dead Republic (Jonathan Cape) and Naomi Alderman, whose Disobedience opened a window on the orthodox Jewish community in London, turns her eye on Oxford students in The Lessons (Viking).

Nicola Barker's Darkmans was one of the glories of 2007: Burley Cross Postbox Theft (Fourth Estate), an epistolary comic novel that lays out the pettiness and passions of a Yorkshire village, is described as "a Cranford for today". JJ

Literature

Shakespeare, Sex and Love, by Stanley Wells (Oxford). The term "bowdlerize" is an eponym for the man who cut the rude bits out of Shakespeare to protect the morals of 19th-century women and children. Lately it has been more common to sex up the Bard, presumably on the assumption that country matters are all the youth of today understand. Stanley Wells can be relied upon to take a more nuanced approach, offering a historical account of attitudes to sex and love in Elizabethan times, and an analysis of those themes in Shakespeare's work. A central text is Romeo and Juliet, which Wells argues is at once the oeuvre's "bawdiest" and "most romantic" play. SP

Poetry

White Egrets, by Derek Walcott (Faber). Derek Walcott's latest collection contains few surprises: the poems revisit subjects – the oscillations of time, the place of the poet in the world, Walcott's home turf of the Caribbean – that will be instantly familiar to aficionados of his work. As ever, though, when it comes to the swoop and dive of his cadences, the Nobel laureate is in a class of his own. After the mud-slinging that attended the ill-fated 2009 race for the Oxford poetry professorship, Walcott makes a welcome return here to what he does best. SC

Biography

Katherine the Queen, by Linda Porter (MacMillan). When it comes to Tudor biography, it might seem as if there is no ruff left unruffled. And while no-one can pretend that Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow, is a new subject, she has had less attention than some of the other wives. Genuinely clever, and with an all-too-human weakness for bad boys (step forward Thomas Seymour), she deserves to be seen as something more than a provincial dowdy who became queen in order to wipe the ailing king's enormous bottom. KH

Physics

The Edge of Physics: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology, by Anil Ananthaswamy (Duckworth). The bottom of a defunct iron mine in Minnesota seems a strange place to search for dark matter, the mysterious substance that clusters around galaxies. But science takes people to unusual places. In Antarctica, a detector cut from a cubic kilometre of ice keeps watch for ghostly particles from outer space. Meanwhile, in the Atacama desert in Chile, astronomers search for stars in their death throes. The author mucks in with scientists performing the world's most extreme experiments, creating a travelogue that celebrates the blood, sweat and tears that drive our understanding of the universe. IS

Literature

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro (Faber). The author of the prizewinning 1599 embarks on another literary whodunit, investigating the cases of all the conspiracy theorists who have claimed Shakespeare's plays were not written by him at all. In doing so, he weighs up the claims and counterclaims advanced over centuries by a distinguished line-up of doubters including Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain and Orson Welles. CA

May

Fiction

May is a bumper month for fiction, with the long-awaited new novel from David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Sceptre). In 1799 the young Dutch clerk of the title finds himself one of the few westerners to visit Japan, a closed society that keeps its foreigners confined to a walled island. Jonathan Coe anatomises more recent times in The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim (Viking), a picaresque journey through the last decade, while Andrew O'Hagan's The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (Faber) relates the star's last days through the eyes of her pet.

Alan Warner reintroduces us to the irrepressible cast of The Sopranos in The Stars in the Bright Sky (Jonathan Cape) as the girls, now in their 20s, launch themselves on a reunion holiday. Expect lipgloss, hysteria and razor-sharp dialogue. Meanwhile, there's more sedate In-Flight Entertainment (Jonathan Cape) in the new story collection from Helen Simpson, queen of domestic wryness, and an English release at last for Christos Tsiolkas's exuberant Commonwealth Writers' prize winner The Slap (Atlantic). At a suburban barbie, a man hits someone else's child; Tsiolkas examines the incident through eight different perspectives to build a rich mosaic of Australian society. JJ

War

War, by Sebastian Junger (Fourth Estate). From the author of The Perfect Storm comes an intense account of an almost fatal year with the 2nd Battalion of the American army as it fights its way through eastern Afghanistan. Accepted by the soldiers, Junger uses his documentary skills to ask his comrades tough questions about killing, dying, loyalty and friendship. The result is a book not just about war, or even one war in particular, but about the limits of courage and, yes, love under pressure. KH

Technology

The Googlization of Everything, by Siva Vaidhyanathan (Profile). Google's corporate ethic, famously, is "Don't be evil", but does the company really live up to it? Media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan has been drafting this book online since September 2007, as the giant has stumbled into many controversies – acquiescence in Chinese censorship, book-digitisation settlements, and privacy worries about Streetview or its datamining of users' email and search histories. "One of my key concerns with Google is that it is a black box," Vaidhyanathan writes. Good that someone is trying to pry open the lid a fraction. SP

Poetry

Dragon Talk, by Fleur Adcock (Bloodaxe). It's a shock to realise that this is Adcock's first new collection for a decade; the pin-sharp voice of poems such as "Against Coupling", "Advice to a Discarded Lover" and "For a Five Year Old" is so essential and recognisable that it's difficult to know how we've done without it for 10 years. Inspired by the letters her father wrote from England, where he was stationed, to his parents in New Zealand during the second world war, this collection returns Adcock to familiar territory: the family, and her own complex feelings towards her native country.  SC

Psychology

Why We Lie: The Source of Our Disasters, by Dorothy Rowe (Fourth Estate). In her previous books Dorothy Rowe has managed to unpick most of the things that bother us in everyday life, from worrying about money to believing in a punitive God. Here she asks why we tell lies and puts the answer down to a mixture of vanity and terror. All pretty toxic, as far as personal relationships are concerned, but Rowe goes further: our failure to tell the truth is behind all manner of ills, from the current economic crisis to global warming. Scary stuff, but Rowe is so wise that you begin to think it might be possible to change. KH

Children's fiction

The Prince of Mist, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Orion). Murky things from the past haunt a young boy after his family moves to an inventor's house on the Atlantic coast. The motif of a six-pointed star appears in some unlikely places and Max becomes increasingly uneasy the more he hears the chilling stories of the legendary Prince of Mist. A powerful and atmospheric story of a mysterious character, whose sinister business is the granting of gifts in exchange for souls. (12+) JE

JUNe

Fiction

We've been waiting a long time for the follow-up to Yann Martel's tiger fable Life of Pi, the bestselling Booker winner ever; Beatrice and Virgil (Canongate) continues the animal theme, exploring human cruelty through the characters of a monkey and a donkey. In 2008 Juan Gabriel Vasquez's The Informers established a vital new voice in Latin American literature. In The Secret History of Costaguana (Bloomsbury) he offers a riposte to Nostromo, as a Colombian newly arrived in London answers Conrad's advertisement for inspiration – then tells the story his way.

There'll be a new Jackson Brodie from Kate Atkinson (Doubleday) and a theatrical extravaganza set in Dublin, London and New York from Joseph O'Connor (Ghost Light, Harvill Secker), while Caine prize winner Helon Habila addresses pressing themes of oil and kidnap in the Niger delta in The River (Hamish Hamilton). JJ

Literature

Encounter, by Milan Kundera (Faber). A new collection of essays by Milan Kundera is always cause for celebration, and Encounter was loudly acclaimed on its publication (as Une rencontre) last year in France. This volume includes extended discussions of some figures who have previously had walk-on parts in his criticism, particularly Louis-Ferdinand Céline and the Italian novelist Curzio Malaparte. As with his novels, it is a mystery how much Kundera manages to pack in to an apparently simple style, and in previous volumes such as Testaments Betrayed and The Curtain he has shown himself a matchlessly perceptive and sympathetic critic of his fellow artists. SP

Industry

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: The Story of Steam, Industry and Invention, by William Rosen (Cape). Steam is peculiar and really rather clever. You can't touch it and you can barely see it. Yet, when harnessed, it can move mountains or, failing that, pumps, pistons and giant rotating wheels. In this deft book, Rosen explains how this most whispy of commodities lies behind the world's transformation from one giant farm into a series of industrial clusters. As in his earlier book, Justinian's Flea, Rosen is skilled at hooking small, local phenomena into a narrative of global sweep and significance. KH