Authors Philip Gross, from Penarth, novelist Terri Wiltshire from Newport, and Nikolai Tolstoy from Berkshire have been shortlisted for the English-language Wales Book of the Year award, announced at a ceremony at the Hay Literary Festival.
The winner of the £10,000 prize will be unveiled in Cardiff on 30 June.
The awards are administered by Academi, the Welsh national literature promotion agency and society for authors.
Poet Philip Gross is shortlisted for his work I Spy Pinhole Eye, Terri Wiltshire for her debut novel Carry Me Home and Nikolai Tolstoy for The Compilation of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, an analysis of the origins of the Welsh folk tales.
Now in its 18 year, the awards are presented to the best books of the year in the English and Welsh languages.
The three works shortlisted in Welsh for the Book of the Year were also announced at the Powys book festival on Sunday afternoon. The works shortlisted are Banerog, a volume of poetry by Hywel Griffiths; Naw Mis, a novel by Caryl Lewis and Cymru: Y 100 lle i'w gweld cyn marw, by John Davies, a guide to 100 places in Wales that the author thinks people should see before they die.