From The Times
December 31, 2008
The Hottest Reads of 2009
Nicholas Clee picks some of the likely highlights for the new year

Fiction

As always, previewing the bestsellers is a matter of rounding up the usual suspects. John Grisham (whose The Associate should please fans by returning to the themes of his best-known novel, The Firm), Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, Josephine Cox, Wilbur Smith ... they all have new novels this year.

James Patterson, who has done for fiction what Ford did for motor cars, has eight. However, following the collapse of the supermarket supplier EUK (a Woolworths subsidiary), these bestselling “brands” may not match their usual sales figures.

Who are the new names who might add some variety to the charts? To answer this question in recent years, one has had simply to refer to the authors selected by Richard and Judy for their various book clubs. Now, however, the pair are lurking on the digital channel Watch, which not many people are watching. Whether from there they can promote the careers of writers as effectively as they did Picoult's remains to be seen - although there is some research to suggest that the Richard and Judy imprimatur can transcend the viewing figures.

Among the debut novelists for whom publishers have high hopes are the journalist Anthony Quinn, who has set The Rescue Man (January) in his native Liverpool during the Second World War; Alan Bradley, who has written a village crime mystery set in the 1950s and called The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (January); (Dame) Joan Bakewell, the Government's champion of the elderly and, at 75, fiction newcomer (All the Nice Girls, March); Reif Larsen, whose The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (May) is about a 12-year-old mapmaker making a long journey to Washington to collect a science prize; Eleanor Catton, who wrote the distinctive The Rehearsal (July), about a sex scandal in a girls' school, at the age of 22; and Matt Hilton, a policeman and martial arts expert who introduces his hero, Joe Hunter, in Dead Men's Dust (June).
And then there are those aiming to rival the success of the celebrity novelist Katie Price - Sharon Osbourne (an as-yet-untitled first novel for the summer) and Martine McCutcheon (The Mistress, July).

The full piece from The Times online here.