Colm Toibin won the Costa Award for best novel for BROOKLYN, which makes him the favorite for the overall Costa prize, to be announced January 26. The other category winners were:
Raphael Selbourne, Beauty (first novel)
Christopher Reid, A Scattering (poetry)
Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (biography)
Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer (children’s)
Guardian