Northshire Bookstore Manchester Center Vermont

The Costa Book Awards has five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book. For each category there are three judges – usually an author, a bookseller and a journalist. They select a shortlist of four books, which includes the winner. The criteria are to select well-written, enjoyable books that they would strongly recommend anyone to read.

2005 The Accidental by Ali Smith
Amber—thirtysomething and barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner.

2004 Small Island by Andrea Levy
Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class.

2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

2002 Spies by Michael Frayn
Childhood and innocence, secrecy, lies and repressed violence are all gently laid bare as once again Michael Frayn powerfully demonstrates that what appears to be happening in front of our eyes often turns out to be something we cannot see at all.

2001 Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate
Twelve Bar Blues is a virtuoso epic tale of fate and family, jazz and juju that spans three continents and two centuries to tell a story of enduring roots and indelible love.

2000 English Passengers by Mathew Kneal
In 1857 when Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship up for charter.

1999 Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Rose Tremain's dazzling, prize-winning tale is a pungently atmospheric, richly provocative, and masterfully orchestrated romance of point and counterpoint:

1998 Leading the Cheers by Justin Cartwright
Dan Silas, a London-based former advertising executive whose professional and personal life is in disarray, returns to Hollybush, Mich., for his 30th high school reunion.

1997 Quarantine by Jim Crace
Quarantine is Jim Crace's imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled 40-day fast in the desert.

1996 Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
The sinking of the world's greatest luxury liner, the invincible and magnificent S.S. Titanic, has captured people's attention ever since that tragic April night in 1912 when 1,500 people lost their lives.