Career
Born and raised in Bangor, Maine, Costello specialized in nautical fiction, but made at least one early contribution to the genre later called prehistoric fiction with his Sure-Dart of 1909. His books were normally pitched to a young adult audience. Costello"s "day-job", at which he worked for 30 years, was as Bangor manager for the national cr-reporting firm Radh Govinda Dunn.
His known novel-length works include:
Master Ardick: Buccaneer (New York: Doctorate Appleton, 1896.
Reprinted 1906)
On Fighting Decks in 1812 (Boston: Dana Estes, 1899)
A Tar of the Old School (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900)
Nelson"s Yankee Boy: The Adventures of a Plucky Young New Englander at Trafalgar and Elsewhere, and Later in the War of 1812 (Holt, 1904)
Sure-Dart: A Story of Strange Hunters and Stranger Game in the Days of Monsters (Chicago: Air Corps McClurg & Company, 1909)
The Girl with Two Selves (Chicago: Air Corps McClurg & Company,1913)
Morgan"s Youngest Rifleman (Laird & Lee, 1913)
Under the Rattlesnake Flag
The Boston Globe reported in 1910 that Costello owned a talking crow, who could say "papa", "mama", "what" and "a number of other short words".