Out of breath - Julie Myerson

It's the summer holidays. And suddenly there's a strange boy at the bottom of Flynn's garden. Soon, she and her wayward brother Sam are walking out of the house in the middle of a hot summer's night and crossing four fields to find him again.

But as well as the boy, Flynn and Sam find a whole gang of runaway kids. There's Diana, who's just had a baby. There's Mouse, who's only five and likes to set fire to things. And there is the boy himself, who stirs up feelings in Flynn that she's never felt before. But there's also someone else - the unspeakably malign and terrifying presence they're all running from. Escaping him, they stumble on an amazing and extraordinary house by a waterfall, a house which seems to offer safety and meets their every desire and need - or does it?

The youngest character in the novel is one day old, and the oldest only seventeen. But the themes that lie at the heart of this ferociously original story are as adult, unsettling and universal as those of Julie Myerson's other novels.