Blood Pearl — Anne Billson

Millie Greenwood leads an uneventful life with her overprotective parents in Bramblewood, the most boring village in England - until one day, just before her sixteenth birthday, she sneakily forges her mother's signature to go on a school trip to Paris.

But by leaving Great Britain via the Channel Tunnel, Millie unwittingly breaks an invisible seal. Before she knows what's going on, she and her friends find themselves targeted by Maison Pim, a Parisian fashion house... which just happens to be the front for an ancient and incredibly evil syndicate of vampires.

Soon, Millie will learn that Bramblewood isn't as boring as she thinks, that there's more to her parents than meets the eye, that the paintings in the Louvre aren't just paintings, that the world is full of ghosts, witches and shapeshifters, that some of her classmates possess hidden talents even they are unaware of... and that the key to her survival might be an ugly, misshapen pearl.

But who can she trust? Because now the vampires are after her blood, and their evil influence reaches far and wide...

Blood Pearl is the first volume in The Camillography, a captivating fantasy saga in which Britain and France provide colourful contemporary settings for the age-old struggles between good and evil, life and death, innocence and experience - and casual wear versus haute couture.