A SCOTS-based author whose work is headed for the big screen has won one of Britain's most prestigious literary prizes.
Edinburgh-based Kate Atkinson has taken the 2013 Costa Novel Award with Life After Life, which judges praised as doing "everything you could ask for in a work of fiction and so much more".
The novel, which is now a contender for Book of the Year, has been snapped up by the producers of the Twilight movie series, with a view to adapting it for the big screen.
Last year's novel award went to double Man Booker Prize-winner Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies, who went on to take the Book of the Year honour.
Ms Atkinson, 62, who studied English literature at the University of Dundee, is now a critically acclaimed international bestselling author.
Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Award in 1995.
Set against the backdrop of World War II, Life After Life is her eighth novel. It explores the theme of what people would do differently if they could live life over again. Protagonist Ursula Todd discovers she has the extraordinary ability to restart her life from scratch, over and over, and finds that even the smallest of choices can have a big impact.
In one version of her life she dies from a bomb during the Blitz, on another occasion at the hands of an abusive husband and is once killed at birth, strangled by her umbilical cord. In the opening pages of the book, set in November 1940, she assassinates Hitler. In each lifetime, she learns from her past mistakes.
Production company Lionsgate, which has achieved huge success by adapting the Twilight novels and The Hunger Games trilogy, the films of which star Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence, has acquired the film rights.
Other page-to-screen adaptations by the entertainment company include 2009's Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, and 2011's Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, based on a book by Paul Torday.
A script is being written by Semi Chellas and Esta Spalding, who have written for the hit American drama series Mad Men and the US adaptation of the Scandinavian crime drama The Bridge respectively.
Life After Life, published in March to critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013, but not the Man Booker.
It was named on American star Oprah Winfrey's summer reading lists and is Amazon's Editors No 1 pick of 2013.
Poet Michael Symmons Roberts, a regular collaborator with Scottish classical composer and conductor James MacMillan, won the Costa Poetry Award for the second time with his sixth collection, Drysalter.
Writer, lecturer and mental health nurse Nathan Filer won the First Novel Award for The Shock of the Fall - the story of Matthew and his descent into madness as he confronts his role in the boyhood death of his older brother.
Fresh from winning the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett took the Biography Award for The Pike, an account of the life of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the poet and right-wing revolutionary.
Author, illustrator and political cartoonist Chris Riddell took the Children's Book Award for Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse which the judges called "an instant classic for children of all ages".
Each of the five category winners receives a £5000 prize and competes for the Book of the Year title, with the winner being awarded £30,000.
The winners were selected by a panel of judges chaired by novelist Rose Tremain CBE and including writer John Burnside and singer Sharleen Spiteri, and Book of the Year will be announced in London on January 28.
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