Seventeen-year-old Stephen has kept the “Beast” alive, despite the Eng lish weather, in a wire cage at the reservoir near his foster home with the Reynolds family. But “his boy” is now unmanageable. When he enlists the help of his deadbeat father, the killer crocodile escapes. Through Stephen’s first-person narrative, a gripping story is told of how recapturing his former pet nearly costs him his life. Stephen also tells about his family relationships: the family that let Stephen down; his love for his dead brother; and his new relationship with sixteen-year-old teenager Carol Reynolds, who, surpris ingly, becomes his ally. 2007 Carnegie Medal Shortlist, 2007 Branford Boase Award Shortlist. hc

Originally published by Scholastic Great Britain, in 2006.

In the caged depths of an urban reservoir lives a monstrous creature. Its existence is unknown to anyone except the teenage boy who feeds it. Six years ago it was a vicious little baby, now it has grown enormous, and its rusting pen can't hold it much longer. Stephen has kept the Beast a secret against all the odds. He's got other painful secrets - like why he never sees his mother, or mentions his brother Selby, and wishes his father was dead. Stephen's life in foster care, always bad, is getting worse, and he's not a boy who plays by the rules. But his extraordinary efforts to free himself of the Beast make him a hero that readers will never forget.