Women's untold stories dominate Baillie Gifford prize shortlist

A study of Jack the Ripper’s victims and an investigation into an unfinished work by Harper Lee are among six books up for the £50,000 non-fiction prize

From Casey Cep’s investigation into Harper Lee’s abandoned true-crime book to Hallie Rubenhold’s look at the women murdered by Jack the Ripper, the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction is dominated by female writers telling the untold stories of women.

Five of the six writers in the running for the £50,000 award, one of the UK’s most prestigious for non-fiction, are female. Historian Rubenhold was picked for The Five, which lays out the “untold lives” of the victims of Jack the Ripper, while New Yorker writer Cep is listed for Furious Hours, in which she unpicks Lee’s aborted attempt to write about the case of the murderous preacher Willie Maxwell in the late 1970s.

Related: The real story behind Harper Lee’s lost true crime book

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