My Summer of Love

It's 1984 and one of the hottest summers Yorkshire's seen. It's the kind of woozy heat you lose your mind in. Mona is 15 years old. She's a drinker, a thief, and a fruit machine addict. Things are already going badly in the pub where she lives with her obese step-brother PorkChop, but when Mona meets posh Tamsin Fakenham, a sassy girl with beautiful breasts, an actress mother, and a sister who's died of starvation, things very quickly get much worse. Winner of the Betty Trask Award 2002, this novel was made into a 2005 film starring Emily Blunt and Nathalie Press.