Despite the fact that they can take years to write and get published, novels often simultaneously pick up common themes, and every year similar elements appear across the genres. Sometimes this is as straightforward as a missing Italian Old Master or a manuscript with secrets relating to the Christian Church. Or The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which is at the centre of three new novels: Mr Dick, or the Tenth Book by Jean-Pierre Ohl, which was reviewed in the TLS on December 19, 2008; The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl, published in February by Harvill Secker; and Drood by Dan Simmons, published by Quercus in March.

Sometimes the point of coincidence is slightly mysterious: houses designed by Modernist architects; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin is the setting for The Women by T. C. Boyle, reviewed in the TLS of March 6, and the Villa Tugendhat inspired The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, reviewed in the TLS of February 13. The connecting element can also be thematic. This year sees novels on the lives of Rupert Brooke (The Great Lover by Jill Dawson, which was reviewed in the TLS of January 16), John Clare (The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, Cape, May) and Emily Dickinson (Paola Kaufmann, The Sister, Alma Books, January).

In another sort of coincidence, three regular TLS contributors are publishing novels this year: Alan Brownjohn (Windows on the Moon, Blackspring Press, March), Matthew Reynolds (Designs for a Happy Home Bloomsbury, May) and Sean O’ Brien (Afterlife, Picador, August).

To read last week's Up and Coming: From the TLS Arts desk, click here.

Explore The TLS

• TLS Selections

• TLS Archives

• TLS Arguments

• TLS Writers

• TLS Letters

• Poem of the Week

• Then & Now