From Shatner to Shakespeare, what will you be reading in 2016?

William Shatner and William Shakespeare will feature prominently in the book world in 2016

Author Julian Barnes's many fans will not have to wait long for their next fix as his 12th novel, The Noise of Time, arrives in January. It is Barnes's first since winning the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for Sense of an Ending. Set in 1930s Russia, The Noise of Time is about the life of the composer Shostakkovich.

There is also a new novel on the horizon from the former Man Booker winner Yann Martel. He has struggled to repeat the success of Life of Pi so it is difficult to predict how The High Mountains of Portugal will fare. It is about a quest for a lost relic which takes the reader from Africa in the 1600s to contemporary North America.

It looks like an especially strong year for female writers.

Jessie Burton is back, with what promises to be one of the most talked about second novels of recent years. But can it repeat the phenomenal success of her debut The Miniaturist?

The Muse is set during the Spanish Civil War and 30 years later in London. It tells the story of a young Caribbean immigrant and a bohemian artist.

Jessie Burton's literary thriller The Miniaturist was one of the publishing success stories of 2014

Eimear McBride returns with a new book in September, following her award-winning first novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. The Lesser Bohemians is about an affair between an 18-year-old Irish girl and an older actor in North London in the 1990s.

Lost novel

Other familiar names with new books out in 2016 are Ali Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Rose Tremain and Margaret Drabble. Drabble's The Dark Flood Rises, follows 60-year-old woman who works in a care home.

A lost novel by Stella Gibbons, the author of Cold Comfort Farm is published in January. She wrote Pure Juliet in the 1970s but it was forgotten until her daughter discovered it in a drawer in 2014. It tells the story of a teenager who runs away from the life her parents have planned for her.

Among the debuts to look out for, the award-winning performance poet, rapper and playwright Kate Tempest publishes her first novel The Bricks that Built the Houses. It follows four friends and promises to explore contemporary urban life.

A number of American stars are lining up with new books in 2016, including Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Patchett and the woman who wrote Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx.

Debut novelist Kate Tempest was nominated for the Mercury music prize in 2014

The wait for a new book from Jonathan Safran Foer is almost over. His first novel in 10 years, Here I Am, is about the dissolution of a Jewish family in New York against the backdrop of an earthquake and war in Israel. Don DeLillo has a new book out too.

Details are scarce but Jay McInerney returns with his first novel since 2006, called Bright, Precious Things. And there are rumours of new works from Cormac McCarthy.

A big moment awaits for fans of Jeffrey Archer with the publication of the last two novels in his seven-part series The Clifton Chronicles. He started the saga about a family from Bristol in 2010 when he was 70. All the previous books have topped bestseller lists around the world.

Samantha Shannon may be just 24 but she is back with a third novel in The Bone Season series, which has sold more than 300,000 copies in the English language alone. In The Song Rising an enemy from the heroine Paige Mahoney's past is about to return.

Bard anniversary

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death will be marked with new books re-interpreting three of his plays, by Howard Jacobson, Anne Tyler and Margaret Atwood.

Atwood will also make her graphic novel debut with Angel Catbird, about a heavily muscled superhero who is part cat, part bird.

Angel Catbird, the first of three graphic novels by Margaret Atwood aimed at all ages, will be published in the autumn

And there is a new, full-length graphic novel from the American creator of Ghost World, Daniel Clowes. Entitled Patience, it's a psychedelic science-fiction love story.

On the non-fiction front, there is the first full biography written with Paul McCartney's approval and with access to his close family and friends. Macca: The Life of Paul McCartney is by Philip Norman.

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life is the spy novelist John le Carre's first memoir and his first work of non-fiction.

And last, but by no means least, there is In Leonard, a Life - actor William Shatner's personal tribute to his friend of more than 50 years and Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy, who died in February 2015.

The pair first met as unknown actors on the set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Little did they know their next roles, in a new science-fiction television series, would change their lives forever.

But with more than three thousand books published every week you can rest assured there will always be books that take off that no one had predicted.