The shortlist for the 2012 Orwell Prize shortlist has been revealed. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the finalists.

Here’s more about the award: “The Prize was established in its present form by the late Professor Sir Bernard Crick in 1994, ‘to encourage writing in good English – while giving equal value to style and content, politics or public policy, whether political, economic, social or cultural – of a kind aimed at or accessible to the reading public, not to specialist or academic audiences.’”

If you want more books, follow these links to our literary mixtapes with free samples of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners, the Orion Book Award finalists, the Best Mystery Books of 2011

Orwell Prize Shortlist for 2012

Hood Rat by Gavin Knight

The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb

The Opium War by Julia Lovell

Dark Market by Misha Glenny

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan by Toby Harnden