2006: The best books to look out for

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Torn between Will Self and Peter Carey? Can't wait for the next David Mitchell or DBC Pierre? The Observer gives you the inside line on this year's essential reading

Over the next few months, despite the brave claims and rash promises you made last night, you will probably not be learning Japanese, slashing your body mass index or abseiling down Hadrian's Wall. We will be charitably optimistic and assume that you may, indeed, succeed in kicking the cigarettes and you will be kinder to small children. But some resolutions are easier to stick to than others, and what we can help with is that far more important pledge to keep abreast of the latest literary dispatches.

This is a project best undertaken with expert advice. As the book mountains roll from lorry to shop floor, here is The Observer's guide to the novels, biographies, histories, memoirs and a host of other treats to watch out for in 2006.

Last year was spoken of as a vintage year for fiction and, at first glance, this year seems as though it will follow suit. Perhaps most exciting is Black Swan Green (Sceptre, May), the new novel from David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. What makes him noteworthy is that each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it. Black Swan Green announces itself as a reasonably recognisable story of boyhood and adolescence; in Mitchell's inventive hands, it is sure to be anything but standard.

Equally intriguing is the second novel from the Booker Prize-winning DBC Pierre, Ludmila's Broken English (Faber, March). A story of conjoined twins and Russian bridal websites, it is likely to be as hectic and irreverent as Vernon God Little, and will interest those who wonder whether Pierre can pull it off again.

There is plenty to choose from among more established writers: Australian novelist and double-Booker winner Peter Carey publishes Theft: A Love Story (Faber, May), a two-handed narration between an artist fallen on hard times and his eccentric brother.

From William Boyd, who has quit long-term publisher Penguin, comes Restless (Bloomsbury, September), set in the Second World War. From Margaret Atwood comes The Tent (Bloomsbury, March), a collection of witty and wicked short stories.

We look to novelists to reflect the confusions of contemporary life and, over the last few years, they have had much to contend with. In The Good Life (Bloomsbury, March), Jay McInerney reintroduces us to some of the characters from his earlier novel, Brightness Falls. Their complicated lives are altered abruptly by the 11 September attacks.

In rather less sombre vein, Douglas Coupland's jPod (Bloomsbury, June) is a typically satirical take on the new breed of supergeeks and, in itself, an update of the bestselling Microserfs. Meanwhile, Will Self's new novel, The Book of Dave (Viking, March), takes us to a post-apocalyptic London in which a cabbie's memoirs become the unexpected inspiration for a new religion. Look out also for new books from Helen Dunmore, Alan Warner, AM Homes, Jake Arnott and Clare Morrall, and a much-anticipated debut in Gautam Malkani's Londonstani (Fourth Estate, May).

There are more writers - and artists and musicians - in Richard Davenport-Hines's non-fictional work, A Night at the Majestic (Faber, February), which tells the story of a dinner party that took place in Paris in 1922. You'd have needed to be at the top of your conversational game, given that the guests included Proust, Joyce, Picasso and Stravinsky. A similar scenario crops up in The Yellow House by Martin Gayford (Viking, April), which describes the feverishly productive spell during which van Gogh and Gauguin lived together.

Also well worth looking out for are Carmen Callil's Bad Faith (Cape, April), an ambitious and harrowing study of Louis Darquier, Nazi collaborator and Vichy facilitator; the next tranche of Simon Callow's majestic biography of Orson Welles, Hello Americans (Cape, May); Gordon Burn on two very different footballing stories in Best & Edwards (Faber, April); Julia Lowell on The Great Wall (Atlantic, February), whose subtitle - 'China Against the World 1000BC-2000AD' - suggests a work of panoramic scope; and Thomas Keneally's equally formidable efforts to chart the founding of Australia in The Commonwealth of Thieves (Chatto, June).

For those of you who prefer your reading to be a little more personal, the memoir looks set to continue its popularity. Jane Juska follows up the much-enjoyed A Round-Heeled Woman with Unaccompanied Women (Chatto, June), the story of her late(ish) life search for love and romance. Griff Rhys Jones, Toby Young, Rebecca Solnit and John Burnside also make contributions to this burgeoning genre, but perhaps most enticing is A Man Without a Country (Bloomsbury, April), Kurt Vonnegut's 'memoir' of life in Bush's America, which he came out of self-imposed literary retirement to write.

Happy reading. We'll be here throughout the year to keep you up to date with 2006's literary developments.

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