1. Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu – Nigeria

Soon you will become the thing all other beasts fear.

Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure’s daddy died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a spirit who promises to bring her father back – but she has to do something for him first.

Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back that can’t be scratched. An itch that speaks to her patrilineal destiny, to defend her people by becoming a leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honour this was before he vanished, but it’s one she couldn’t want less.

But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their fathers’ decisions, Ozoemena’s fellow students at her new boarding school start to vanish. Treasure and Ozoemena will face terrible choices as each must ask herself: in a world that always says ‘no’ to women, what must two young girls sacrifice to get what is theirs?

2. Go As A River by Shelley Read – Colorado

I’ve come to understand how the exceptional lurks beneath the ordinary like the deep and mysterious world beneath the sea.

On a cool autumn morning, Victoria Nash heads into her village pulling a rickety wagon filled with late-season peaches. As she nears an intersection, a stranger in town stops to ask her the way.

She makes the decision to walk with him. ‘Go as a river,’ he tells her as they part ways.

So begins a mezmerising story of split-second decisions and considered acts that make up one woman’s tumultuous life, as Victoria begins to absorb and follow his words.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

3. Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood – Cornwall/LA/London

Grace Adams is one bad day away from saving her life. One hot summer day, stuck in traffic on her way to pick up the cake for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday party, Grace Adams snaps.

She doesn’t scream or break something or cry or curl into a ball. She simply abandons her car and walks away.

But not from her life – towards it. To the daughter who won’t live with her anymore and has banned her from the party. To the husband divorcing her. Towards the terrible thing that has blown their family apart.

Today she’ll show her daughter that no matter how far we fall we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams was amazing. Her husband and daughter once thought so. They and the world might have forgotten. But Grace is about to remind them…

Amazing Grace Adams tells the story of a life, a marriage, a family, set against a single north-London day. A rollercoaster ride of redemption and discovery, it’s a powerful celebration of womanhood.