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EDNA O'BRIEN'SHouse of Splendid Isolation (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is a timely read in the wake of the Irish peace initiative. An I.R.A. terrorist known as "the Beast" evades a manhunt by finding sanctuary in the remote country home of a widow who is besieged by memories of a clandestine romance and her abusive husband. The two strike up an uneasy alliance with surprising personal and political ramifications.

Also this month: MIKAL GILMORE, the youngest brother of Gary Gilmore, who was executed in 1977 for the murder of two Mormons, confronts the family demons in Shot in the Heart (Doubleday). PEGGY NOONAN exquisitely plumbs the world of Washington politics and New York domesticity in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Random House). In Standing Firm (HarperCollins), DAN QUAYLE reminisces about the four years he was a heartbeat away from the presidency. An overzealous spokesman for the tobacco lobby is the "hero" of CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY'S satirical Thank You for Smoking (Random House). The fevered expansion of New York in the 1870s is the setting for E. L. DOCTOROW'S ninth novel, The Waterworks (Random House). Wife swapping and toe socks are in vogue in RICK MOODY'SThe Ice Storm (Little, Brown), an acerbic look at Watergate-era America. Interviews with last year's Nobel Prize-winning novelist are collected in Conversations with Toni Morrison (University Press of Mississippi). Historian DAVID CANNADINE'SAs- pects of Aristocracy (Yale) is a romp through the eccentricities of British upper-crusters. Ella Fitzgerald (Scribners) is STUART NICHOLSON'S biography of the First Lady of Jazz. Private dick Easy Rawlins is back in WALTER MOSLEY'SBlack Betty (Norton). V. S. NAIPAUL'S new novel, A Way in the World (Knopf), is a wry exploration of the imperialistic forces that conquered the Caribbean. EDWARD SAID examines the Palestinians' struggle for statehood in The Politics of Dispossession (Pantheon). SALLY BELFRAGE completed Un-American Activities (HarperCollins), her compelling memoir of the 1950s, shortly before her death. GUY GARCIA'SObsidian Sky (Simon & Schuster) takes place in Mexico. DAVID IGNATIUS'SThe Bank of Fear (Morrow) is a thriller about a Middle Eastern banking scandal. And in PETER LEFCOURT'S zany Di & I (Random House) Princess Diana and a Hollywood screenwriter dream of opening a McDonald's

ELISSA SCHAPPELL