Winner of the Galaxy Children's Book of the Year Award 2011.

May 2011 New Gen Book of the Month.

Prize-winning Patrick Ness displays brilliant new skills of sensitivity in this hauntingly touching story of how a boy deals with the looming threat of his mother’s death from cancer. Haunted by a monster in his dreams, denied much information by his family and treated as a weirdo by his class mates and a ‘special case’ by his teachers, Conor struggles to get to grips with the devastating emotions which threaten to overwhelm him.

How he finds the courage and strength to face the end when it happens is both utterly shattering and deeply satisfying. Costa Award winner Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final idea of much-loved Carnegie Medal winner Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself.

Synopsis

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

About the Author

Patrick Ness is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy for which he has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Costa Children's Book Award. He was also twice shortlisted for the Carnegie medal. Patrick has written two other books for adults and is a literary critic for the Guardian. He lives in London. Siobhan Dowd lived in Oxford with her husband, Geoff, before tragically dying from cancer in August 2007, aged 47. She was both an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary person. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation