Costa on the Mind

The Costa Book Awards -- formerly the Whitbread Awards -- have been announced:

The five successful authors who will now contest for the Costa Book of the Year are:

William Boyd who, after winning the First Novel Award in 1981 for A Good Man in Africa, returns 25 years later to claim the Novel Award for Restless

Former film-maker Stef Penney wins the First Novel Award for The Tenderness of Wolves, a murder mystery set in the snowy peaks of Canada, a country she has never visited

Brian Thompson wins the Biography Award for Keeping Mum, a witty account of his own childhood which the judges called the perfect antidote to the "'misery memoir'"

John Haynes beats Seamus Heaney to take the 2006 Poetry Award for Letter to Patience, set in a small mud-walled bar in northern Nigeria at a time of political unrest

Linda Newbery, a former Whitbread Book of the Year judge, triumphs in the Childrens Book Award category with Set in Stone

With 500 shops in the UK and 150 overseas, Costa is the “fastest growing coffee shop chain in the UK.” This is the first year Costa has sponsored the former Whitbreads, which recognize “the most enjoyable books of the last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.”

One of the five winners will be named Costa Book of the Year. The winner will be announced at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on February 7th and awarded a £25,000 prize.

The press release announcing the winners is here. The London Telegraph runs it all down here.