Three women have been shortlisted for one of the most prestigious prizes for debut novelists.

The Guardian writer Paula Cocozza, Gail Honeyman and Preti Taneja are all in the running for the 2018 Desmond Elliott prize.

The chairman of the prize’s trustees, Dallas Manderson, said the three selected from the longlist of 10 were those who showed most promise for the future. “It is never an easy task and the authors featured in this year’s longlist were all exceptional,” he said.

Cocozza is shortlisted for How to be Human, which explores themes of delusion and imagination as a woman becomes obsessed with the fox that visits her garden as her marriage disintegrates. She was praised by the judging panel, including the author Sarah Perry, the journalist Samira Ahmed and Waterstones fiction buyer Chris White, for having created “a persona as winning and as wily as her invited guest”.

Perry said: “In evocative and elegant prose Cocozza delves deep into the psyche of a strange and troubled woman. The reader is invited to share in her intense connection to a fox and will admire the author’s mordantly witty dissection of contemporary manners.”

Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine won the Costa first novel award in January. The judges described her novel, which it to be turned into a film produced by Reece Witherspoon, as “a coming to life rather than a coming of age”. The voice of its hero is “so vital that the reader accepts without question her intense loneliness, so that her tentative journey towards a redemptive kindness becomes profoundly moving”, said Perry, who is this year’s chair.

Taneja is shortlisted for We That Are Young, a retelling of King Lear in modern-day India. It charts the downfall of a family dynasty, with the judges praising its “sensual” and “revelatory” prose. Perry said: “The scope of Taneja’s ambition is breathtaking. We That Are Young is both universal in its themes of familial duty and personal failing, and exquisitely specific in its depiction of contemporary Indian society.”

Manderson praised the judges, saying: “Sarah, Samira and Chris have done a tremendous job and it is with great joy that we present their chosen shortlist. I look forward to finding out which of the three titles they deem most worthy of winning in June.”

The winner of the £10,000 prize will be revealed at a ceremony at Fortnum & Mason in London on 20 June.