The judges of the Orange Prize for Fiction have whittled their 20 favourite books of the year down to a shortlist of just six.

Previous Orange Prize winner Helen Dunmore's The Siege has made the cut from the long-list alongside two debut novelists.

The Orange Prize goes to the best novel of the year written by a woman in English and published in the UK.

The top prize is a cheque for �30,000, which is anonymously donated every year.

Orange Prize shortlist

• Anna Burns - No Bones
  
• Helen Dunmore - The Siege
  
• Maggie Gee - The White Family
  
• Chloe Hooper - A Child's Book of True Crime
  
• Ann Patchett - Bel Canto
  
• Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

On the judging panel for the competition is former Radio 4 Today presenter Sue MacGregor, actress Fiona Shaw, novelist AL Kennedy, professor of English literature at Cambridge University Gillian Beer, and Julie Wright, senior book buyer at WH Smith.

Ms MacGregor said: "It was difficult to pick only six but I think we have come up with a fine selection for the shortlist.

Hard choice

"This is the first year we have so much UK talent on the Orange Prize shortlist, with four UK authors.

"Two novels are exciting debuts and Helen Dunmore a former Orange Prize winner makes it on the list. The final choice will indeed be a hard one."

But there was no room on the shortlist for popular author Joanne Harris and her novel Five Quarters of the Orange.

Dunmore won the first Orange Prize in 1996, for her novel A Spell of Winter Viking.

Last year Australian novelist Kate Grenville won the award for The Idea of Perfection.

This year's award will be presented at a ceremony on 11 June and there will be readings from the shortlisted books at the Hay-on-Wye Festival, which begins on 31 May.