As the curtain drops on 2022, a new dawn is breaking in the literary world. Whether you’re scrabbling for a resolution and want to kick off the new year with some literary self-improvement or you’re just a bit of a book junkie, we’ve selected some of the coming year’s most exciting new reads that will most certainly live up to the hype.

Literary heavyweights Sir Salman Rushdie and Ms Margaret Atwood return with new works of fiction. Elsewhere, there’s an illuminating debut from Stormzy-endorsed writer Ms Jyoti Patel to look forward to, alongside remarkable novels from returning prize winners Ms Eleanor Catton and Mr Paul Harding. Here are the novels we can’t wait to read in 2023.

A decade after her Booker win with The Luminaries, which made her the youngest winner of the prize, Ms Eleanor Catton returns with a lament for our broken and ravaged world in Birnam Wood. A survival story set in the verdant lands of New Zealand, a guerrilla gardening group faces off with a duplicitous American tycoon as they each stake their claim to abandoned land, with the apocalypse looming just around the corner. A morality tale at heart, this is a prescient and pacy psychological thriller that questions the balance of power in this unjust world.

Published 2 March

Ms Jyoti Patel’s debut, The Things That We Lost, won last year’s #Merky Books New Writers Prize, the publishing imprint led by the London grime artist Stormzy. It is no mean feat to beat 2,000 submissions to the top place. In The Things That We Lost, a young man attempts to unravel the secrets his mother has been holding from him his whole life. Patel’s novel revolves around the lingering trauma of bereavement and shows the lengths we go to to protect those closest to us. Sensitively written with a deep, emotional undercurrent.

Published 12 January

Bestselling author Mr Max Porter returns with a vignette about a young man on the brink. Shy, a desperate teenager who exists on a precipice, is surrounded by people who want to help him. As he wrestles with the ghosts of his past and the terrifying possibilities within his future, he battles spiralling self-destructive urges and steps out into the night, alone. Porter’s polyphonic tale reveals the inner workings of a troubled mind with measured empathy and humility.

Published 6 April

This February, master storyteller Sir Salman Rushdie transforms a tale based on traditional Indian lore into a sweeping epic. Set in 14th-century India, a chance encounter between a grieving orphan and an all-powerful goddess empowers the young girl to create Victory City, a utopian civilisation that she whispers into existence. It is a place where equal rights prevail and women are no longer ruled by the patriarchy, but as the days and years pass, the city loses sight of its origins. Rushdie deftly conjures an entire world within the pages of this fantastical novel.

Published 9 February

Hot on the heels of his acclaimed debut, Open Water, Mr Caleb Azumah Nelson returns to southeast London where he introduces us to his protagonist, Stephen, a young man attempting to understand his place in the world, over the course of three summers. Through dance – at his community church, in dark basements, in front of DJs, or at home alone – Stephen feels complete, but when the music stops, he has to face the bigger questions that loom over him about his future. Told through the author’s trademark soulful writing, Small Worlds explores what it means truly to belong.

Published 11 May

This is Mr Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. In The Shards, he blends fact, fiction and fragments of autobiography to tell the story of 17-year-old Bret, a senior at an elite prep school in Los Angeles. A serial killer is on the loose and targeting teenagers in the local area. As people around him start to disappear, Bret has a hunch about the new kid at school, but will those closest to him listen before it’s too late? A vivid – and bloody – coming-of-age novel that bears all Easton Ellis’ lauded hallmarks.

Published 17 January

An Eden-like enclave, free from injustice and judgement. In these polarised times, it sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Yet the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mr Paul Harding was inspired by the real events of a small, isolated island just off Maine in the 1800s that was one of the first racially integrated places in the US when he wrote This Other Eden. Following the eccentric and wily inhabitants as they struggle to preserve their dignity when the big, bad world comes knocking, Harding’s poetically written tale is a warning shot against societal intolerance.

Published 9 February

One of the world’s most celebrated and beloved writers (and the author of The Handmaid’s Tale) returns to short fiction in her first collection since 2014. From aliens reciting fairy tales to mediums channelling the mighty Mr George Orwell, these 15 stories together showcase the weird and wonderful workings of Ms Margaret Atwood’s mind, laced with her fierce imagination, razor-sharp wit and boundless intellect. A luminous collection that is at once hilarious and heartbreaking, Old Babes In The Wood explores what it is to be human.

Published 7 March