But she's getting pretty close. So when she has a chance to take part in a four-week clinical study that involves a pill that makes the taker attractive to the opposite sex, Ellie doesn't waste any time signing up. After all, she has nowhere to go but up, right?

    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.

    When rancher Dallas O'Brien sees the skirmish, he bravely saves the infant and his lovely mother. Single and new in town, Kate accepts the handsome cowboy's offer of a safe haven at his ranch. Spurred on by their Texas-sized attraction, Dallas and Kate untangle a web of lies that throws the baby's paternity into question. And Dallas wonders—could he be a father? Could he be a husband? But when bullets start flying, the real question is, will he survive to find out?