The girl who cried wolf - Bella James

A growing up story with a difference, and a startling debut, The Girl Who Cried Wolf shows the tumultuous transition from teenager to young woman and is a story about believing in something, whether love, faith or simply yourself.

Anna Winters is beautiful, reckless and entirely self-absorbed. She spends more time thinking up reasons to call in sick to school than she does studying for her A levels. She shies away from her family, from responsibility - from anything in fact that doesn't involve peach cider and endless parties with her friend Jules.

Anna assumes that her headaches are an inconvenient symptom of her wild lifestyle, until a doctor tells her that she has cancer.

As a terrifying black cloud descends upon her, Anna finds solace in Michael, another patient in the oncology ward. Michael shows Anna a chink of light in the darkness and sees beauty behind her illness and loves her sassy wit. He makes Anna forget she is ill.

Michael recovers; but Anna's prospects worsen. And in emergency surgery, as she hovers between life and death, she is given a stark glimpse of why her life is so broken, and as she realises the simple fulfilment of being truly content, fears it may now be too late.