Hilary Mantel wins best-novel Costa Book Award

[January 03, 2013]  LONDON (AP) -- British writer and two-time Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel has been named novelist of the year at Britain's Costa Book Awards for "Bring Up the Bodies."

Mantel's achievement Wednesday for her blood-soaked Tudor saga makes her the first author to win both the Costa novel award and Booker Prize in the same year.

The Costa Book Awards carry a 5,000 pound ($8,125) prize and are given in five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book.

Other winners included Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie for "The Overhaul," and Francesca Segal for her first-novel "The Innocents," which is set in a tightly-knit Jewish community in northwest London and modeled on Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence."

"Dotter of Her Father's Eyes," written by Mary Talbot and drawn by her husband, Bryan, won the biography category, marking the first time a graphic work has won a Costa award. Severely dyslexic writer and illustrator Sally Gardner won the children's book prize for her fifth novel, "Maggot Moon."

The five winners are now shortlisted for the 25,000 pound grand prize of 2012 Costa Book of the Year which will be announced Jan. 29 in London.

The awards, known until 2006 as the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971 and recognize "outstanding and enjoyable books" by writers based in the U.K. and Ireland.

[Associated Press]

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