Accessibility help Skip to navigation Skip to content Skip to footer

Books to read now: the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist reviewed

We look at the contenders for the biggest prize in women’s fiction, the winner of which will be announced on June 7

The Sport of Kings by CE Morgan
A rich novel about a Kentucky horse-breeding family is both a meditation on race and a bitter inversion of the American dream
The Power by Naomi Alderman
An inventive tale in which women possess a special power insists that evil acts are gender neutral
First Love by Gwendoline Riley
An unflinching portrait of a marital trade-off between intimacy and freedom
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
This tale of a Nigerian couple under familial pressure to conceive is a subtle and unsentimental triumph
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
An epic tale of the fate of three musicians in 20th-century China
The Dark Circle by Linda Grant
A smart and empathetic story of young tuberculosis patients in a postwar sanatorium