1. Underworld by Don DeLillo
(Jan/Picador): Long before DeLillo became internationally famous with novels such as the hilariously subversive White Noise, Libra and Mao II, he was busily examining his society through wide open eyes. Underworld, his 12th novel, is massive in size as well as ambition and may achieve at the end of this century what Dos Passos's USA did at the beginning.
2. Toward The End Of Time by John Updike
(Feb/Hamish Hamilton): Sex and religion, two of Updike's preferred themes, walk hand in hand through this eccentric, offbeat and often brilliant Walter Mittyish novel set in a post-war world of fear and paid protection. Cleverly avoiding the directly autobiographical, Updike nevertheless - as in several of his recent books - continues to ponder death.
3. The House Gun by Nadine Gordimer
(Feb/Bloomsbury): Never the most polished of stylists, Gordimer at her best is a compelling writer and this is a thriller. A successful couple lives in a comfortable private world maintained by their gun. Their relative calm is disrupted when they discover their son is a murderer.
4. Martin Dressler - The Tale Of An American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
(March/ Phoenix House): Huge fuss has surrounded this Pulitzer-prize winning, traditional, semi-historical New York novel which follows one man's American Dream born in the 19th century and pursues it into this one. Millhauser's debut has caused much excitement - people who haven't even read it are discussing it.
5. Paradise by Toni Morrison
April/Chatto): Four young women retreats to a former convent which they then establish as a sanctuary for outcasts. Initially all is well, but local resentment builds. Morrison's novel acts as a metaphor for mistrust and the pressure to conform.
6. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
(Secker/May): America's history is continuing to preoccupy her novelists. Author of Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks is one of the most underrated of writers. This is a moving portrait of a pre-Civil War American family and one man's passage from terrorist to martyr.
7. Cities Of The Plain by Cormac McCarthy
(Picador/ June): McCarthy brings his Mexican border trilogy to a close in a work which again displays his Biblical prose and epic vision. He is truly a 20thcentury master, possessing everything - except possibly a sense of humour. Powerful images abound, but don't spend much time looking for one-liners.
8. The All-True Travels And Adventures Of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley
(Flamingo/ June): US history also dominates Smiley's new book which follows its eponymous heroine's adventures during the mid-19th-century pioneering westward migration into the heart of America. Dreams are soon shattered by the vicious realities of the Civil War as Lidie witnesses the birth of a nation. Yet again Smiley, author of the 1992 Pulitizer prize-winning A Thousand Acres, demonstrates her extraordinary versatility.