More Dickens and even more Shakespeare, but also new novels from Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, plus exciting new voices – 2012's literary highlights

After years of propping up bars before he he began writing, Scottish novelist Alan Warner still prefers a pub crawl to the literary circuit

Four novels, three prizes, two films - not bad for a writer whose first book spent 18 months in a box in his bedroom. But if his tale of a 21-year-old shopgirl was proclaimed a modern classic, why has Alan Warner abandoned her for two drunken, sexist Scotsmen? Melissa Denes finds out.