Author Katharine McMahon is the only female author to be short-listed among the top ten in the Richard and Judy Book Club Best Read of The Year.

The book club selects ten titles per year for its shortlist and each is given a segment on Channel 4.

Last year's winner was The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.

The segment from Katherine's book, the Crimean love story The Rose of Sebastopol, will be aired at 5pm on Wednesday.

For the show, she was filmed in her Oxhey village living room and actors were hired to perform an excerpt from the book in the Old Operating Theatre in London.

During the next ten weeks, people can vote for their favourite title with the winner being announced at this year's glittering GBBA awards ceremony.

Renowned as the publishing industry's equivalent to the BAFTAs, the awards are the glitziest event in the UK book industry's calendar, celebrating the nation's favourite books, authors and publishers.

Katharine says being selected by the Richard and Judy Book Club has already made an enormous difference to her career.

She said: "The exposure is so good my publishers have now bought my backlist, which is great news for me.

"This is my sixth book and to have the others back in print is fantastic recognition.

"In the beginning it can be so hard to make a mark. When it came out I had no reviews from national papers as it's so difficult to make that break.

"For it to be recognised now is like a miracle and to be the only woman on the list is quite extraordinary."

Katharine's back catalogue includes Footsteps set on the Suffolk coast, which she says is about a woman whose finds out about her husband's attachment to someone else when he is killed in a sudden accident and The Confinement, which juxtaposes the life of a teacher in Victorian times with a contemporary setting.