Here’s the short-list selection for the Costa Awards 2018. As usual, there are five categories: Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Books. We absolutely loved Sally Rooney’s modern love story Normal People and Pat Barker’s feminist spin on The Iliad in The Silence of the Girls, both nominated in the Novel Award category as well as the strange and wonderful The Colour of the Sun by David Almond in the Children’s Book category. Category winners will be announced on the 7th January and the Costa Book of the Year on the 29th January. Which ones of these have you read?

2018 Costa Novel Award shortlist

Pat Barker for The Silence of the Girls (Hamish Hamilton)

Tom Rachman for The Italian Teacher (riverrun)

Sally Rooney for Normal People (Faber & Faber)

Donal Ryan for From a Low and Quiet Sea (Doubleday)

2018 Costa First Novel Award shortlist

Natalie Hart for Pieces of Me (Legend Press)

Elisa Lodato for An Unremarkable Body (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Stuart Turton for The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Raven Books)

Anne Youngson for Meet Me at the Museum (Doubleday)

2018 Costa Biography Award shortlist

Viv Albertine for To Throw Away Unopened (Faber & Faber)

Bart van Es for The Cut Out Girl (Fig Tree)

Raynor Winn for The Salt Path (Michael Joseph)

Benjamin Zephaniah for The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah: The Autobiography (Scribner)

2018 Costa Poetry Award shortlist

Zaffar Kunial for Us (Faber & Faber)

J.O. Morgan for Assurances (Jonathan Cape)

Richard Scott for Soho (Faber & Faber)

Hannah Sullivan for Three Poems (Faber & Faber)

2018 Costa Children’s Book Award shortlist

David Almond for The Colour of the Sun (Hodder Children’s Books)

Candy Gourlay for Bone Talk (David Fickling Books)

Matt Killeen for Orphan Monster Spy (Usborne)

Hilary McKay for The Skylarks’ War (Macmillan Children’s Books)