IT WAS MEANT TO BE the dawn of a new era. Blake Morrison’s ambitious state-of-the-nation saga South of the River (Chatto, £17.99/offer £16.19) opens with the Labour election victory of 1997 and follows its characters through five years of change and decay.

Nat is a failed playwright, bankrolled by his overworked wife Libby, and about to succumb to the same midlife crisis that is hobbling the country. His uncle Jack struggles with the disintegration of his engineering company. And all the while urban foxes are multiplying, and coming in the night to eat a vine near you. It’s brilliantly written, horribly truthful, utterly absorbing.

The narrator of Sebastian Faulks’s Engleby (Hutchinson, £17.99/£16.19) is also concerned with the internal organs of society – in particular, our education. Mike Engleby has travelled from state primary to public school and Cambridge. But his journey from the bottom of the system to the very top has crushed his heart and warped his intelligence. Engleby has emerged as a glittering monster with shades of Hannibal Lecter. “What’s the point of happiness,” he asks, “when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief?” This is Faulks’s blackest novel, and his funniest.

Ian McEwan is another writer fascinated by the external influences that shape an individual. On Chesil Beach (Cape, £12.99/£11.69) takes place in 1962. Edward and Florence are on the first night of their Dorset honeymoon, but it all goes horribly and pitifully wrong, largely because of the conventions of the time. "And what stood in their way? ... their Englishness and class and history itself." This a short, wistful novel about a love affair that does not end happily. It's not exactly a tragedy but the final pages are unexpectedly heartrending.

Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills (Faber, £16.99/£15.29) is a gorgeously crafted sprawl of a novel about a group of people in the Hollywood Hills. The sprawl is intentional – this has deliberate echoes of Boccacio’s Decameron, in which a group of nobles, confined to the country, exchange gossip and stories. Smiley’s modern nobility is made up of film producers, agents, actors and hangers-on who converge upon the home of a film director, Max, and his lover, Elena. One by one they tell their stories, and Smiley twists through the dense strands of narrative with extraordinary skill.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (HarperPerennial, £7.99/£7.59) – the winner of this year’s Orange Prize – effortlessly blends the intimate with the epic, building a vivid picture of a country ripped apart by war.

Ugwu is a houseboy employed by a university lecturer. Olanna is a rich girl from Lagos, escaping a life of privilege. Richard is a nice young Englishman, hopelessly in love with Olanna’s difficult twin sister. These three must somehow survive the bloodshed, danger and sheer chaos of the war with Biafra. This novel is tragic, inspiring, comic, terrifying and altogether wonderful (forgive the cheerleading; I was one of the judges).

The central character in Andrew O’Hagan’s Be Near Me (Faber, £7.99/£7.59) is a Catholic priest who has been sent to a rundown town in Ayrshire. For the first time in his long career he is an outcast. In this place a Roman collar is an outward sign of painful division. “Away ye go, ya papish scum,” as someone growls at him. The refined Father David is dismayed by the yawning gulf between himself and his people. This is O’Hagan at his subtle, sympathetic best.

Many of this year’s most notable novels are about being a stranger in a strange land. But the characters in Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park (Faber, £7.99/£7.59) are strangers in their own land. Cusk is a writer of great elegance and barbed wit, and some of her observations about middle-class life will make you wince – I treasured the moment that poor, aspirational Amanda realises that her show-off kitchen is actually too big. Arlington Park is an outer suburb of London, and the novel describes one rainy day in the lives of its anxious inhabitants, from dawn to dinner party.

Jane Harris’s The Observations (Faber, £7.99/£7.59) is as rich and plummy as a fruitcake, and the narrator has an engaging resilience. This is Scotland, in 1863. Bessy Buckley, whose past is as chequered as gingham, walks into a remote farmhouse looking for work. Employed by the beautiful Arabella, she quickly discovers that her mistress has some odd ideas. Why must Bessy keep a diary? And what happened to the last maid? Bessy’s gruff, gutsy voice is a total delight.

Buy the books here

Celebrity choice: Stephen King, master of horror

I loved WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, by Sara Gruen. Great story; loads of fun; hard to put down. So what if the heroine weighs 2,500lb? Lisey’s Story by Stephen King is out in paperback from Hodder next month

Reader choice: THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger is a sad, funny, moving love story that seems preposterous but is so well written that the characters become believable. Winifred Pedder, Conwy

Times Recommends

• Simon Kernick's Harrogate festival diary
• The 10 greatest sci-fi films never made
• Europe Between the Oceans by Barry Cunliffe