A. M. Homes Awarded Women’s Prize for Fiction

Hilary Mantel can’t win them all. A. M. Homes took home the Women’s Prize for Fiction on Wednesday night in London, for her novel “May We Be Forgiven.”

Ms. Mantel had been considered the favorite to win the award for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the second in her series of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, which had won the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book of the Year award.

Ms. Homes’s novel, her sixth, centers on two brothers â€" one a historian and Richard Nixon scholar, the other a TV executive â€" and the violent act that upends their lives.

In beating out fellow finalists Ms. Mantel, Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Maria Semple and Kate Atkinson, Ms. Homes became the fifth American in as many years to win the honor, formerly known as the Orange Prize. The four previous winners were Madeline Miller “The Song of Achilles,” Téa Obreht (“The Tiger’s Wife”), Ms. Kingsolver (“The Lacuna”) and Marilynne Robinson (“Home”).