The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation has released a shortlist for the £10,000 (about $13,445) Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, which is open to writers of any nationality writing in English. The winner will be named September 17 in London. This year's shortlisted titles are:
The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman
Boudicca's Daughter by Elodie Harper
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao
White Road by Harry Whitehead
Poor Girls by Clare Whitfield
In this 10th anniversary year, the foundation has moved to working with books from the point they're published in paperback. Following research and feedback focused on impact and accessibility, the foundation said it believes "that our mission to connect the best adventure novels of today with new readers can be best achieved at this point in a book's life and we're excited to see what impact this may have."
Also being celebrated at the awards ceremony will be the New Voices award for aspiring writers and the Author of Tomorrow award for writers aged 21 years and under who have completed a short piece of adventure writing.