Diva without a Cause - Grace Dent

Fifteen-year-old Shiraz Bailey Wood's days are filled with hanging around outside Claire's Accessories, her parents work crap jobs, and her school is pretty much loser central. But this loveable British dreamer with a brain and a heart of gold is beginning to feel there might be a lot more to life than minimum wage and the bling of a souped-up car.

Grace Dent's Diary of a Chav is a bestseller in the UK. Grace is still grounded for dying her mother's best saucepan purple while customizing denim hot pants when she was a teenager, but she also works as a journalist for The Guardian and Radio Times for whom she recently wrote a phenomenally popular Big Brother blog.

She is currently working on the fourth Shiraz book for Hodder UK, and Diary of a Chav #2 will publish in hardcover on the Little, Brown Young Readers list in Fall 2009.