Top 26 Costa Book Award-Winning Novels

Four decades of judges' favourites, some provocative, some quietly devastating. Pick the one that has aged best.

1. 1
   The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

   Mark Haddon's 2003 mystery narrated by a teenage boy with an unusual mind.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Days Without End

   Sebastian Barry's 2016 novel of two soldiers in love on the American frontier.
   953pts
3. 3
   Normal People

   Sally Rooney's 2018 novel of a push-and-pull relationship between two Irish students.
   897pts
4. 4
   The Children of Dynmouth

   William Trevor's 1976 Whitbread Novel winner about a disturbed teenager prowling a quiet seaside town.
   718pts
5. 5
   How to Be Both

   Ali Smith's 2014 two-part novel pairing a Renaissance painter with a modern teenager.
   718pts
6. 6
   Fools of Fortune

   William Trevor's 1983 Whitbread Novel winner tracing an Anglo-Irish family ruined by political violence.
   717pts
7. 7
   The Satanic Verses

   Salman Rushdie's 1988 magic-realist novel, one of the most controversial books of its era.
   636pts
8. 8
   Restless

   William Boyd's 2006 spy novel about a mother revealing her wartime life as an agent.
   636pts
9. 9
   The Secret Scripture

   Sebastian Barry's 2008 novel of a centenarian Irish woman recalling her long life in an asylum.
   636pts
10. 10
    Bring Up the Bodies

    Hilary Mantel's 2012 Booker-winning sequel following Thomas Cromwell and the fall of Anne Boleyn.
    538pts
11. 11
    Life After Life

    Kate Atkinson's 2013 novel of a woman who relives the same life again and again.
    538pts
12. 12
    Unsettled Ground

    Claire Fuller's 2021 novel of middle-aged twins facing eviction and family secrets in rural England.
    538pts
13. 13
    The Child in Time

    Ian McEwan's 1987 novel about a father coping with the abduction of his young daughter.
    419pts
14. 14
    Poor Things

    Alasdair Gray's 1992 Victorian pastiche of a woman resurrected by a surgeon.
    419pts
15. 15
    Middle England

    Jonathan Coe's 2019 state-of-the-nation comedy set around Brexit.
    418pts
16. 16
    An Artist of the Floating World

    Kazuo Ishiguro's 1986 novel of a retired painter reckoning with his past in postwar Japan.
    0pts
17. 17
    Small Island

    Andrea Levy's 2004 novel of Jamaican migrants and their English hosts in postwar London.
    0pts
18. 18
    The Accidental

    Ali Smith's 2005 novel in which a mysterious stranger unsettles a holidaying family.
    0pts
19. 19
    Felicia's Journey

    William Trevor's 1994 thriller following a young Irish woman lured into the English Midlands.
    0pts
20. 20
    Quarantine

    Jim Crace's 1997 retelling of Jesus's forty days in the desert among a group of travellers.
    0pts
21. 21
    Spies

    Michael Frayn's 2002 wartime novel of two boys who suspect a neighbour of being a German agent.
    0pts
22. 22
    Brooklyn

    Colm Tóibín's 2009 novel of an Irish girl emigrating to 1950s New York.
    0pts
23. 23
    The Hand That First Held Mine

    Maggie O'Farrell's 2010 novel linking a 1950s Soho romance with a modern new mother.
    0pts
24. 24
    Pure

    Andrew Miller's 2011 novel about an engineer clearing a Paris cemetery before the Revolution.
    0pts
25. 25
    A God in Ruins

    Kate Atkinson's 2015 companion to Life After Life, following a bomber pilot across a century.
    0pts
26. 26
    The Mermaid of Black Conch

    Monique Roffey's 2020 Caribbean fable of a fisherman and a mermaid he rescues.
    0pts

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