The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has announced the shortlist for the 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award, worth $50,000. Judges Hannah Kent, Jennifer Mills and Melanie Saward said of the shortlist: ‘We found all six books deeply affecting, and many highly memorable for their unswerving demands for social justice and reclamations of power.’

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Salonika Burning by Gail Jones

Macedonia, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war.

Amid the destruction are those who have come to the frontlines to heal – surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of them – Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley – are at the centre of Gail Jones's extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones's imagination these four lives intertwine and change, each compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko

When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice.

Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.

In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.

The smaller format paperback edition will available from 1 October and can be pre-ordered here.

Sunbirds by Mirandi Riwoe

1941, West Java. Love and revolution are in the air. And war is on its way.

Shortly before the Japanese invade, the van Hoorn family throws their famous Sinterklaas party at their tea plantation. One of their guests, Mattijs, a Dutch pilot, hopes to forge a future in the Dutch East Indies, possibly with the family's daughter, Anna, but she is torn between her dreams of Holland and her desire to belong. Meanwhile the housekeeper, Diah, keenly observes the goings-on around the plantation, wondering how much to tell her freedom-fighter brother. When the Japanese forces finally arrive on Java's doorstep, they all have to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives, especially those who must evacuate to Australia.

Songs for the Dead and the Living by Sarah M. Saleh

When the ground beneath your feet is always shifting, how can you ever know where you belong?

Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious, and they must try to blend in even as they fight to retain their identity. When conflict comes to Beirut, Jamilah's world fractures, and the family is forced to flee to Cairo: another escape, and another slip further away from Palestine, the homeland to which they cannot return. In the end, Jamilah will have to choose between holding on to everything she knows and pursuing a life she can truly call her own.

Days of Innocence and Wonder by Lucy Treloar

For all her life, Till, now twenty-three, has lived in the shadow of the abduction of a childhood friend, and her tormented half-wondering about whether she might have been able to stop it.

Finally, at the age of twenty-three, Till flees her past and the hovering presence of her fearful parents. In Wirowie, a town that's on its knees, she stops and slowly begins creating a new home, rebuilding an abandoned railway station.

But there is danger here too, and Till must ultimately decide whether she can turn from her fear-filled past and face down, even pursue, the darkness that suddenly looms so near – or whether she'll flee once more and never stop running.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro.

Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand – then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?

Three highly commended titles were also announced:

• Women & Children by Tony Birch
  (Will be available in paperback from 29th October and can be pre-ordered here.)
• Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
• Women I Know by Katerina Gibson

More information about the award can be found here.