A brilliant, intense and important book for everyone who cares about the real lives of many young people. The award winning author of Junk, Melvin Burgess, is at his very best in this hard hitting and deeply touching story about Billie, Rob and Chris, three fourteen year olds who have nothing in common except that they have fallen outside the normal rules of teenage life. Why? Each tells their own story. Mostly sad, often shocking and frequently funny too, through these firsthand accounts Burgess gripping reveals how life really is for some young people.

Comparison: Mary Hooper
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Synopsis

Everyone says fourteen-year-old Billie is nothing but trouble. A fighter. A danger to her family and friends. But her care worker sees someone different. Her classmate Rob is big, strong; he can take care of himself and his brother. But his violent stepdad sees someone to humiliate. And Chris is struggling at school; he just doesn't want to be there. But his dad sees a useless no-hoper. Billie, Rob and Chris each have a story to tell. But there are two sides to every story, and the question is ...who do you believe?

A Piece of Passion from Puffin's Publishing Director, Sarah Hughes:

"You may think you know Melvin Burgess and his books.  He's an author whose reputation precedes him, so in many ways he needs no introduction.  But whether you have read any of his other work or not, put aside any assumptions you might be tempted to make and let me introduce you to his stunning new novel Kill All Enemies. Read it as if it were a debut.

"Written by a master, this is a novel with plenty of swagger, keen intelligence and empathy, but at its heart is an aching vulnerability.  The thing that stayed with me most after reading Billie, Rob and Chris's stories was the way that kids who could all too easily be written off or ignored had been given a voice.  These are 'problem' kids, dismissed as no-hopers, who, when you scratch the surface, often turn out to be heroes - I hope they will find their way into your heart as they did mine.  I want to let you discover the characters for yourselves, so I won't say any more.

"Snuggle into a comfy chair and let those voices carry you away."

Melvin Burgess is the winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Carnegie Medal and has been shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year. For this book, he went into Pupil Referral Units (PRUs, where excluded students are sent) around the North West, as well as to other places where people got together out of school, and asked them to tell him their stories: “I found out what I think I always suspected. Those young people weren't losers, they weren't wasters – many of them were heroes; real, one hundred per cent, modern heroes. It's just that school wasn’t a priority for them. They had bigger stuff to deal with. Kill All Enemies is based on real people. I hope they feel I've done justice to their remarkable, surprising stories, and the bravery, humour and conviction with which they live their lives.”

Reviews

'A writer of the highest quality with exceptional powers of insight' - The Times

'(Of Junk:) Brilliantly and sensitively written, it encompasses the raw, savage and ecstatic world of the adolescent mind ... a superbly crafted and important book' - The Guardian

About the Author

Melvin Burgess was born in Sussex in 1954. He did poorly at school and after a short period training as a journalist had a number of odd jobs and was unemployed for much of the time. His first book, The Cry of ther Wolf, was published in 1990, and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has since won the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award for his controversial novel, Junk, The Lancashire Children's Book Award for Bloodtide and the LA Times Best Young Adult Book of the Year award for Doing It. His work has been widely adapted for stage and TV, and he has built up a reputation for controversial, hard-hitting books dealing with themes ranging from sex and drugs to adaptions of Norse mythology. Melvin lives and works in Manchester. He has two children, Oliver and Pearl. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation