Costa Category Award Winners 2020
The Winners of the Costa Category Book Awards 2020 have been announced. All books are available to order directly through us if you fill in the form here. Or they can be bought online through our bookshop.org store and we’ll get commission on your order.
The overall Costa Book Award winners will be announced on Tuesday 26th January.
Winner of the 2020 First Novel Award
Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household. Happy in their differences, they build a home together. Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world – until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.
Winner of the 2020 Novel Award
The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story by Monique Roffey
April 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch. David, a fisherman, sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch – and attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect. Aycayia, a centuries old mermaid, is drawn to his singing. But her curiosity is her undoing when she is caught by American tourists… David rescues her and hides her away, where she slowly, painfully turns into a woman.
Winner of the 2020 Biography Award
The Louder I Will Sing by Lee Lawrence
On 28th September 1985, Lee Lawrence's mother Cherry Groce was wrongly shot by police during a raid on her home. The bullet shattered her spine and both their lives changed forever. The Louder I Will Sing is a memoir about growing up in modern Britain as a young Black man. It's a story both of people and politics, but also the positive power that hope, faith and love can bring in response.
Winner of the 2020 Poetry Award
The Historians by Eavan Boland
Throughout her nearly sixty-year career, acclaimed poet Eavan Boland came to be known for her exquisite ability to weave myth, history and the life of an ordinary woman into mesmerising poetry. Her final volume, The Historians, is the culmination of her signature themes, exploring the ways in which the hidden, sometimes all-but-erased stories of women's lives can powerfully revise our sense of the past.
Winner of the 2020 Children's Book Award
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk is an epic journey of police chases, storms at sea and unexpected puppies. Set in the aftermath of World War 1 it follows two orphans as they take their narrowboat across the Channel in search of lost loved ones and a place to call home.
Order your copy directly from us or buy online through our bookshop.org store.
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