Between January and August 2010 - some top-notch books are coming your way. Be excited. Be very, very excited

A little climate change- Tired of RK Pachauri lecturing us on how to save the world from global warming? Well, the man’s coming out with a novel that has nothing to do with climate change. Return to Almora is about a chap caught up in the banalities of his life when his past life comes calling. Spooky footprints.

His end of the world - Ian McEwan’s much-awaited novel Solar is about a Nobel-winning physicist who starts to lose his sheen while his life crumbles under the weight of his infidelities. He makes amends for his mistakes while trying to rescue the world from the throes of global warming. Hmm, Mr Pachauri?

Vicky loved Abdul- Queen Victoria having a thing for her Indian secretary? Not another historical fiction please! Nope, this is better. Shrabani Basu digs up the archives and brings us the fascinating real story in Victoria and Abdul. With Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games, a cracker of a non-fiction.

Morbid Mumbai Kalpish Ratna, the nom de plume of doctor-writers Kalpana Swami-nathan and Ishrat Syed, stitches two tragedies that struck the city of Mumbai — the 1993 riots and 1893 plague — in The Quarantine Papers, a masterful tale of mystery and savagery.

War monger- Don Delillo’s Point Omega goes into the mind and heart of an American ‘defence intellectual’, a man who advises and plans wars and counter-insurgency operations. A slim book with a phat subject: do cold men feel warmness?

Family ties and knots- Way to Go may not begin from where The Last Burden ends, but Upamanyu Chatterjee does carry on the story of Shyamanand and his sons Jamun and Burfi. They unite to walk down separate paths and redefine family ties, love and that place we call home. Dark, caustic, funny Upamanyu.

A divine comedy- A preserved monkey and a donkey play the title roles in Booker winner Yann Martel’s new novel Beatrice and Virgil. Martel’s hero, a taxidermist aspiring to be an author, shares many traits with his creator, delves into the art of writing. Oh, it’s Martel who does that actually.

India & bros. Ltd- Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Alam Srinivas do that challenging, risky thing: write a book to unravel the dispute between India’s most powerful siblings in The Ambanis and the Battle for India. A rich source of energy is struck while explaining how India got itself in this scrap.

DOWN THE HATCH- Gina Hames is a serious scholar who’s not in for the happy hours in her excellent book Alcohol in World History. She combines archaeological findings with case studies, explores how the booze travelled with colonialism and industrialisation. Strong stuff!

Seriously funny- Ayyan Mani is a Dalit living in a Mumbai slum and working for a Brahmin scientist. Manu Joseph, in his debut novel Serious Men, explores the dynamics that exist in the complex socio-economic world that we inhabit. Oh, what the hell — it’s a Rushdie-esque rib-tickler!

The real fake- McCoy Remember the Fake IPL Player whose blogs last season made us look away from the TV screen to the computer monitor? Well, cricket’s equivalent of the Phantom of the Opera is back with The Gamechangers that takes a close look at Indian cricket, tongue firmly in pads, of course.

Newer testament Philip Pullman moves from His Dark Materials trilogy to the bold and ecstatic novel, The Good Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Part-Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and part-The Last Temptation of Christ, Pullman pulls off a brilliant character study of a household name. Amen.

Familial problems- Fatima Bhutto usually writes poetry. But in Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, the niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, recounts how tragedy keeps striking the Bhutto dynasty. From high life to conspiracies, an insider’s take.

The godmothers- Forget Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim. The ladies who call the shots and order the shootings are here. In the novel The Women Dons of Mumbai, Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges go behind the purdah of Mumbai’s underworld.

Maximising miniatures- Comic books kill the novel. Or so we are told. Busting this myth comes Gautam Bhatia’s graphic novel Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India with drawings by Rajasthan miniature artists. Desi stereotypes are turned on their pugrees. The brush gets mightier than the pen.

Washed up on the shore- You’re bowled over by David Mitchell’s imagination. Or you find it too ‘post-modern’. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has its hero working for five years in a remote Japanese island before he can marry his fiancée. A meeting with a beautiful midwife changes plans.

Revolutionary roads- Two cars, two eras, two books.- One middle class aspiration. R. C. Bhargava and Seetha’s The Maruti Story and Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s Nano-vation chronicle the two automobile revolutions from India — and how they drove a country forward.

Dames and dosas- A follow-up to 2008’s scorcher, the Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. II — selected and translated by Pritham K. Chakravarthy — is here. The tales of mystery include a horror story from a Singaporean Tamil writer, an action-packed vintage 1974 ‘Karate Kavitha’ adventure comic, and much more. Total sambar suspense.