A Glass Apart

London’s Goldsboro Books has released its shortlist of contenders for the 2024 Glass Bell Award, which “celebrates the very best in contemporary fiction.” From a longlist of 14 titles, only half a dozen—almost all by women—remain in the running:

• In Memoriam, by Alice Wynn (Viking)
• Clytemnestra, by Costanza Casati (Michael Joseph)
• Strange Sally Diamond, by Liz Nugent (Sandycove)
• Lady Macbethad, by Isabelle Schuler (Bloomsbury Raven)
• The Square of Sevens, by Laura Shepherd Robinson (Mantle)
• The Turnglass, by Gareth Rubin (Simon & Schuster)

Three of those qualify as crime, mystery, or thriller novels: Strange Sally Diamond, The Square of Sevens, and The Turnglass.

This year’s winner will be announced on Thursday, September 26, at Goldsboro Books’ 25th birthday party. The prize is £2,000 and “a beautiful, handmade, engraved blue glass bell.”

The Glass Bell Award was created in 2017 by Goldsboro’s co-founder David Headley. Previous recipients include Claire Whitfield’s People of Abandoned Character, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six, and Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den.