For the second year in a row, a photo puzzle was hand-delivered to the publishing imprints with titles nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction. This morning, however, there was only one delivery address, as all five shortlisted books fall under the Penguin Random House Canada umbrella.

The finalists – selected from 95 titles submitted by 50 publishers – were determined by a jury comprising author and journalist Carolyn Abraham, journalism professor and author Stephen Kimber, and non-fiction writer and folklorist Emily Urquhart. The winner, who receives $60,000, will be announced Nov. 2.

• Ian Brown, Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-first Year: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning (Random House Canada)
• Deborah Campbell, A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War (Knopf Canada)
• Matti Friedman, Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier’s Story (Signal/McClelland & Stewart)
• Ross King, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (Bond Street Books/Doubleday Canada)
• Sonja Larsen, Red Star Tattoo: My Life as a Girl Revolutionary (Random House Canada)