Motifs, mottos and misfits shape the 2015 Costa award shortlists

A common thread runs through each of the five shortlists for this year’s Costa awards, but there’s always space for an outsider

Things We Have in Common is the title of Tasha Kavanagh’s Costa-nominated YA novel about a troubled teenager with a crush on a schoolmate, and who turns out to share more with a third character than she does with pretty Alice. Looking at the prize’s category shortlists announced this week, it’s almost as if the judges have taken it as their motto: to an unusual degree, each of the five lists is made up of books and authors with things in common. Yet in each, too, there is an equivalent of Kavanagh’s teen misfit.

Related: The Costa category shortlists 2015 – in pictures

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