2009 Costa Book Awards

CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON, the author of The Fattest Man in America (2005), has been shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award for his second novel, The Elephant Keeper, alongside such literary heavyweights as Penelope Lively for Family Album, Hilary Mantel for her Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall, and Colm Tóibín for Brooklyn.

Clive James, Ruth Padel and Christopher Reid have been shortlisted for Poetry, while William Fiennes, Caroline Moorehead and the late Simon Gray have been shortlisted for Biography.

Novel
1. Family Album (Fig Tree, 2009) / Penelope Lively
2. Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009) / Hilary Mantel
3. The Elephant Keeper (Fourth Estate, 2009) / Christopher Nicholson
4. Brooklyn (Viking, 2009) / Colm Tóibín

First Novel
1. The Finest Type of English Womanhood (Hutchinson, 2009) / Rachel Heath
2. John the Revelator (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Peter Murphy
3. Beauty (Tindal Street Press, 2009) / Raphael Selbourne
4. The Girl with Glass Feet (Atlantic Books, 2009) / Ali Shaw

Poetry
1. Angels Over Elsinore: Collected Verse 2003-2008 (Picador, 2008) / Clive James
2. One Eye’d Leigh (Carcanet Press, 2009)/ Katharine Lilalea
3. Darwin: A Life in Poems (Chatto & Windus, 2009) / Ruth Padel
4. A Scattering (Arete, 2009) / Christopher Reid

Biography
1. The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Graham Farmelo
2. The Music Room (Picador, 2009) / William Fiennes
3. Coda (Faber & Faber, 2008) / Simon Gray
4. Dancing to the Precipice (Chatto & Windus, 2009) / Caroline Moorehead

Children’s
1. Solace of the Road (David Fickling Books, 2009) / Siobhan Dowd
2. Trobadour (Bloomsbury, 2009) / Mary Hoffman
3. The Ask and the Answer (Walker Books, 2009) / Patrick Ness
4. Guantanamo Boy (Puffin, 2009) / Anna Perera

The winner of each category will be announced on January 5, 2010, while the overall Book of the Year on January 25, 2010.