Missing Boy

Thirteen-year-old Dan hasn't returned home and his parents don't know whether he's run away, been kidnapped - or something worse. For one family the world as they know it is about to fall apart. At first Dan is sleeping rough, revelling in his independence. But with every passing day, his world is becoming darker and more frightening. A hundred thousand children run away each year. Most come back. But will Dan?

Dan's mother, Eve, a drama teacher, can't focus; his father, Max, only knows how to flee his own demons; and his aunt, Martha, while trained to control difficult situations as a prison officer, struggles to hold it all together. Dan's story is told against a grown-up drama of love and shifting loyalties and two sisters who were best friends until Max came between them. Gradually, all three begin to recognise just how badly they have failed the missing boy.

“'It's highly readable and is written with wisdom and compassion'-- THE TIMES”

It's highly readable and is written with wisdom and compassion -- Kate Saunders THE TIMES
Dan is a subtle study; his vulnerability, his innocence, his resourceful intelligence and his dawning moral sense are wonderfully convincing DAILY TELEGRAPH
Billington explores the difficulties of growing up and growing older with exquisite attention to detail SHE
This easy-to-read tale is moving and poignant STAR MAGAZINE
Sacrifice... combined with the suggestion that through suffering Eve, Max and Martha are brought to a state of greater love, understanding and honesty, is really the moral heart of the novel SPECTATOR
A well-wrought, honest book that is generous with its insights and tender in all the right places DAILY EXPRESS
Billington keeps the tension rising, and it all feels horribly believable -- Lucy Atkins SUNDAY TIMES
Tautly written and well paced, this is a very readable novel about a difficult and all too common situation GOOD BOOK GUIDE

Rachel Billington has published twenty novels and nine books for children, as well as several non-fiction works. She is also a regular journalist, feature writer and reviewer. She is co-editor of Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners and a Vice-President of English PEN. She has four children and five grandchildren and lives in London and Dorset.

Computational chemistry methods have become increasingly important in recent years, as manifested by their rapidly extending applications in a large number of diverse fields. The ever-increasing size of the systems one wants to study leads to the development and application of methods, which provide satisfactory answers at a manageable computational cost.An important variety of computational techniques for large systems are represented by the linear-scaling techniques, that is, by methods where the computational cost scales linearly with the size of the system. This monograph is a collection of chapters, which report the state-of-the-art developments and applications of many important classes of linear-scaling methods.Linear-Scaling Techniques in Computational Chemistry and Physics: Methods and Applications serves as a handbook for theoreticians who are involved in the development of new and efficient computational methods as well as for scientists who use the tools of computational chemistry and physics in their research

Thirteen-year-old Dan hasn't returned home and his parents don't know whether he's run away, been kidnapped - or something worse. For one family the world as they know it is about to fall apart. At first Dan is sleeping rough, revelling in his independence. But with every passing day, his world is becoming darker and more frightening. A hundred thousand children run away each year. Most come back. But will Dan?Dan's mother, Eve, a drama teacher, can't focus; his father, Max, only knows how to flee his own demons; and his aunt, Martha, while trained to control difficult situations as a prison officer, struggles to hold it all together. Dan's story is told against a grown-up drama of love and shifting loyalties and two sisters who were best friends until Max came between them. Gradually, all three begin to recognise just how badly they have failed the missing boy.

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