Orange prize for fiction - the 2009 longlist in full

Australian author Debra Adelaide's The Household Guide to Dying is the story of a modern-day Mrs Beeton who makes her living writing household guides. When she is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she decides to write a guide to dying to prepare her young daughters for her death, and their life after she is gone Photograph: PR

Longlisted for the Booker prize last year, social worker Gaynor Arnold's debut Girl in a Blue Dress is a retelling of the life of Charles Dickens from the point of view of his estranged wife Photograph: PR

Former television producer/director Lissa Evans, whose credits include Father Ted, has been longlisted for her novel Their Finest Hour and a Half, a 1940-set tale of the making of a film about the rescue at Dunkirk Photograph: PR

Bernadine Evaristo reverses 400 years of history in her novel Blonde Roots, which tells the story of white English girl Doris, abducted into slavery by the Africans Photograph: PR

Ellen Feldman's Scottsboro is the story of the infamous Scottsboro case, in which nine young black men are arrested in 1931 Alabama for the supposed rape of two white girls, told from the perspective of a young journalist battling to save the youths from the electric chair Photograph: PR

Laura Fish's Strange Music, set in 1837, intertwines the stories of the ailing Elizabeth Barrett in Torquay, the Creole maidservant Kaydia on the Barrett estate in Jamaica, and former slave Sheba Photograph: PR

Love Marriage, VV Ganeshananthan's debut, is the story of two Sri Lankan Tamil families over four generations, told through a series of marriages Photograph: PR

American author Allegra Goodman's Intuition sees a young scientist apparently discover a cure for cancer, only for his colleague and girlfriend to start to doubt his findings Photograph: PR

Samantha Harvey's debut The Wilderness is the story of a man in his early 60s, struggling to retain his memories and his identity as Alzheimer's starts to take hold Photograph: PR

Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else details the friendship which emerged between brilliant Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla and a young woman who meets him at the end of his life Photograph: PR

The story of Michelle de Kretser's Booker longlisted The Lost Dog is sparked by a missing dog, tracing the lives of author Tom Loxley (the dog's owner), and his lover, the artist Nelly Zhang Photograph: PR

Irish writer Deirdre Madden tells the story of celebrated actor Molly Fox in her novel Molly's Fox's Birthday, written from the perspective of a playwright friend of Molly's, and told over the course of a single day Photograph: PR

Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison's first novel for five years, A Mercy, is set in the 1680s, tracing the life of a small slave girl bought by an Anglo-Dutch trader Photograph: PR

Gina Ochsner's first novel The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight is set in post-Soviet Russia, peopled with characters including Tanya, an employee at a dusty provincial museum, the object of her affections Yuri, and the corpse of a man called Mircha, whose presence haunts the novel Photograph: PR

Marilynne Robinson's Home tells the story of prodigal son Jack Broughton, the godson and namesake of John Ames, the protagonist from her Pulitzer-winning Gilead Photograph: PR

Debut novel Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan is a portrait of the Rajesekharan family in Malaysia, from what the respectable patriarch is hiding from his wife and children, to the unforgiveable crime servant girl Chellam committed which led to her dismissal Photograph: PR

Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows is the entwined story of three families, moving from the detonation of the nuclear bomb in Nagasaki in 1945 to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 via India and Pakistan Photograph: PR

Curtis Sittenfeld, longlisted for the Orange prize in 2006 for her novel Prep, makes the cut this time with American Wife, a fictionalised portrait of the life of Laura Bush Photograph: PR

The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews sees protagonist Hattie having to take responsibility for her sister's children, and setting off on a road-trip to find their father Photograph: PR

Ann Weisgarber's debut The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, set in 1917 in the South Dakota badlands, is the story of an isolated, pregnant farmer's wife, struggling to feed her family in the face of huge adversity Photograph: PR