This has not been a vintage year for the novel. The joint Booker winners and perhaps a handful of others aside, Im not sure that much fiction published in 2019 will be read a decade hence. The good news is that Ive spent the past several weeks joyfully immersed in proof copies of next years novels and can confirm that 2020 is shaping up to be a blinder. Ive tried here to concentrate on the first half of the year.

One of the years biggest novels is sure to be the final instalment of Hilary Mantels Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light (4th Estate, March), which is under strict embargo. Will it be great? Probably. Will it win the Booker? Possibly (although theres serious competition). It could well be pipped to the prize by Maggie OFarrells miraculous Hamnet (Tinder Press, March) a beautiful imagination of the short life of Shakespeares son, Hamnet, and the untold story of his wife, Agnes Hathaway, which builds into a profound exploration of the healing power of creativity.

Hot on Mantel and OFarrells heels are three of the next generation: Evie Wyld, Daisy Johnson and Eimear McBride. Wylds The Bass Rock (Jonathan Cape, March) is her third novel and her best so far. Stepping elegantly through time and weaving together the lives of a host of strong yet damaged women, this is Wylds masterpiece as majestic and monumental as the landmark its named after. Johnsons Sisters (Jonathan Cape, July) is a short, sharp explosion of a gothic thriller whose tension ratchets up and up to an ending of extraordinary lyricism and virtuosity. McBrides Strange Hotel (Faber, February) is an enigmatic, achingly sad book. A woman moves shiftlessly from one hotel to the next, obeying a seemingly abstract set of rules, haunted by her past.

Colum McCanns sixth novel, Apeirogon (Bloomsbury, February), is ambitious formally and thematically, taking on the Israel-Palestine conflict in a work that is both spectacularly inventive and grounded in hard, often brutal fact. It is about grief and forgiveness, about family and politics. If you can read it without sobbing, youre a monster. Also tugging on the heart-strings is Sebastian Barrys A Thousand Moons (Faber, March). Set in the wake of the American civil war, it tells the story of Winona, a brave, bruised orphan from the Lakota tribe whose new life on a Tennessee farmstead is threatened by the past.

AD Miller was shortlisted for the Booker in 2012 for his Moscow-set thriller Snowdrops. His latest, Independence Square (Harvill Secker, February), also looks east this time to Ukraine. The story of Simon Davey and the mysterious Olesya is utterly gripping, a novel with its finger on the pulse of geopolitics that still manages to move deeply.

From the US, we have Jenny Offills Weather (Granta, February). Six years after her majestic Dept of Speculation, its a dazzling state-of-the-nation novel that is every bit as good as its predecessor. Theres also Jeanine Cumminss American Dirt (Tinder Press, January), the tragic tale of a mother and her beloved son on the run from a drugs lord. Kate Elizabeth Russells superb debut, My Dark Vanessa (4th Estate, March), is more than merely an inversion of Lolita for the #MeToo generation; this is a book that asks what we have lost and gained in an era that has revolutionised the way we think about sex and power.

James Scudamore has always written brilliant, twisted novels; his latest, English Monsters (Jonathan Cape, March), is breathtakingly good. Imagine Edward St Aubyn writing The Secret History and youll get an idea of how exquisite and compelling this story about male friendship and betrayal is. Amanda Craigs The Lie of the Land was a bestseller in 2018 and made many books-of-the-year lists. Her next, The Golden Rule (Little, Brown, June), turns upon a chance meeting on a train that leads to a murderous pact. It does what her novels do best, wrapping the reader in a tight, lean narrative, showing the strangeness that lies at the heart of normal-seeming lives. Philip Henshers A Small Revolution in Germany (4th Estate, February) is a beautiful, regret-soaked story about the marks left on our adult lives by the idealism of our youth.

A few more to look out for: Maaza Mengistes The Shadow King (Canongate, January) is a complex, lyrical and compelling historical novel set during Mussolinis invasion of Ethiopia. SJ Parriss Giordano novels are always worth reading. The sixth, Execution (HarperCollins, April), is no exception a brilliantly realised fictionalisation of the Babington plot against Elizabeth I. Nikita Lalwanis gripping thriller You People (Viking, April) is set among undocumented migrants in a shadowy London underworld. Theres a fine second novel from Stuart Evers The Blind Light (Picador, June) reads like a British Don DeLillo, telling the social history of Britain through two generations of a family. Finally, in A Theatre for Dreamers (Bloomsbury Circus, April), Polly Samson goes to the Greek island of Hydra to imagine the first steps in the love affair between Leonard Cohen and his Marianne. As dreamily nostalgic as Cohens song Famous Blue Raincoat.

Along with Kate Elizabeth Russell, there are a number of hotly anticipated debuts hitting the shelves. The 28-year-old Dutch dairy farmer Marieke Lucas Rijnevelds The Discomfort of Evening (Faber, March), translated by Michelle Hutchison, is a rich and luminous novel about fate and grief. It is already a bestseller in Holland. Nazanine Hozars immaculate first novel, Aria (Viking, March), follows a group of Iranians in the lead-up to the 1979 revolution and marks the arrival of a major new voice. Rainbow Milk (Dialogue Books, March) by Paul Mendez is another worth looking out for powerful, sensuous and thrillingly well written.

Its not in the first half of the year, but Im already hugely excited about Eley Williamss first novel, The Liars Dictionary (William Heinemann, July). Shes a magnificent prose stylist and I cant wait to read her in the longer form. We can also look forward to the final part of Ali Smiths era-defining seasonal quartet, Summer (Penguin, July); and theres a new novel by the dependably magnificent Kate Grenville A Room Made of Leaves (Text, July) (which Ive read and its every bit as good as The Secret River). Then, in September, theres Piranesi (Bloomsbury) by Susanna Clarke, the long-awaited new book from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and Mayflies (Faber) by the great Andrew OHagan.

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Fiction to look out for in 2020 - The Guardian