[Harry!]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/



Authors Rose Tremain and Nancy Huston are among the six writers who have been shortlisted for the Orange book prize.

Huston is nominated for her 11th book Fault Lines, while Tremain, who was also shortlisted in 2004, is nominated for her novel The Road Home.

Three debut novelists - Sadie Jones, Heather O'Neill and Patricia Wood - are also up for the female fiction award.

The shortlist is completed by Charlotte Mendelson's When We Were Bad. The winner will be announced on 4 June.

The ceremony will take place at London's Royal Festival Hall, where the winner will be presented with a £30,000 cheque.

'Feel passionately'

Chair of judges, Kirsty Lang, said: "We spent a great deal of time in the judging meeting asking the question, 'Is this a book you feel passionately about? Is it a book that you might pass onto a friend and urge them to read?'

"We all felt these six books passed that test."

She added that she was pleased to have found six authors who reflected "the scope, variety and international breadth of the Orange Prize".

The Orange Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote novels in English by women throughout the world.

Tremain's The Road Home tells the story of Lev, an Eastern European migrant worker who travels to England to seek a better life for his mother and daughter.

A six-year-old boy whose mother believes he is destined for great things is the focus of Huston's Fault Lines, whilst Sadie Jones' The Outcast is about a man adapting to life outside jail.

Mendelson's When We Were Bad is based around family secrets that begin to unravel after the collapse of the older son's wedding.

And Wood's Lottery is a tale of an orphaned man who scoops the jackpot and finds he has a whole new family.

Lullabies for Little Criminals by O'Neill looks at the struggling life of a woman whose mother died and left her with her drug addict father.

Last year, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie scooped the prize for her book Half of a Yellow Sun.

[Ruth]

I've only read one of Rose Tremain's book - The Colour'. It was very well written, and I enjoyed it. I hope When We Were Bad wins this though.