Anita Brookner - Leaving Home (February, Viking)
Another year, another Brookner novel. Her 23rd concerns, not for the first time, an Englishwoman in France.
Dan Jacobson - All for Love (February, Hamish Hamilton)
Jacobson's first novel in 12 years. A historical romance fusing fact and fiction, set in pre-war Austria-Hungary.
John Berger - Here Is Where We Meet (March, Bloomsbury)
The reclusive cultural critic resurfaces with a characteristically experimental novel about memory and sensuality.
Dave Eggers - How We Are Hungry (March, Hamish Hamilton)
The editor of McSweeney's is, even for him, on prankish form in this collection of short stories, one of which consists entirely of black pages.
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (March, Faber & Faber)
The bestselling author of The Remains of the Day returns with another tale of repression, denial and missed opportunity.
Tim Parks - Rapids (March, Secker & Warburg)
The year's most unlikely-sounding literary novel: an adventure story about canoeing. Parks, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997, uses the sport to examine human fragility.
Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (April, Hamish Hamilton)
Having tackled the Holocaust in his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, the young American turns his attention to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Expected to be one of the novels of the year.
Tim Lott - The Seymour Tapes (April, Viking)
As up-to-the-minute as ever, Lott tackles surveillance and tabloid voyeurism in a work already being billed as a "Sex, Lies and Videotape in fiction form for the 21st century".
Tim Winton - The Turning (April, Picador)
From one of Australia's most highly rated novelists comes this collection of overlapping stories about ordinary people.
Jilly Cooper - Wicked! (May, Bantam Press)
The first lady of the bonkbuster downs her riding crop and picks up a chalk duster. Yes, her latest offering is set in the world of secondary education.
Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down (May, Viking)
The chronicler of the dilemmas of modern masculinity shows his versatility with a story told from four very different viewpoints, including that of a dowdy middle-aged woman.
Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black (May, Fourth Estate)
Spirits and spookiness abound in this much-anticipated tenth novel - the author's first for six years - about a tormented medium.
Umberto Eco - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (June, Secker & Warburg)
The author of The Name of the Rose uses pictures alongside his text to illustrate the power of imagery in memory.
Doris Lessing - The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog (June, Fourth Estate)
A return to visionary fiction in this sequel to Mara and Dann, charting Dann's adventures across the frozen wastes of the north.
Paul Theroux - Blinding Light (June, Hamish Hamilton)
The experienced traveller tells the story of an author who journeys to the Amazon to cure his writer's block but becomes addicted to a drug with an unfortunate side effect.
J K Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July, Bloomsbury)
If not the literary event of the year, then at least the publishing event. The plot, as ever, is a closely guarded secret.
Sebastian Faulks - The Footprints on Mount Low (September, Hutchinson)
Faulks's brand of melodramatic historical fiction has its detractors, but many people adore it. His latest is set in the 19th century.
Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown (September, Jonathan Cape)
The controversial master of the multicultural epic returns with a work set in Kashmir and America. Expect fireworks.
Zadie Smith - On Beauty (September, Hamish Hamilton)
After a mixed reception for her second novel, The Autograph Man, will Smith live up to the promise of White Teeth with this transatlantic Romeo and Juliet-style story?
