The "Favourite Author" category brings me straight to Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Perfect stinking hot summer's day reading!
From the Blurb:
When embittered ex-pop-star Lennart Cederström finds a baby left for dead in a plastic bag, he is uncertain what to do - until he hears her cry. It is a clear, haunting, perfectly pitched note, and Lennart decides she will be his project. A child raised in isolation: the vehicle for a pure, uncorrupted music.
But like any girl brought up in a basement, young Theres turns out to have a few idiosyncrasies.
Dangerous ones.
Lennart Cederström, embittered ex-pop singer, is foraging for mushrooms when he finds a baby left for dead in a plastic bag. He revives her and is utterly astonished by the sound of her crying: the child’s voice is a clear, haunting, perfectly pitched note.
Lennart decides the girl will be his project. Raised in isolation, untainted by the dross and banality of the everyday, she will become the vehicle for a pure, exquisite music. He installs the baby in the basement and threatens to kill his downtrodden wife if she breathes a word. But their delinquent son Jerry is a harder case and his ideas for the infant prodigy, whom he names Theres, involve talent shows, celebrity and enormous success.
Meanwhile the child is growing up and developing a few ideas of her own. Only hers involve a hammer. A hammer, and a very strong taste for violence and a strange ambition to appear on Swedish Idol.
Imagine what will happen when she finds a friend who shares her interests.