Tabitha Suzuma was born in London, the eldest of five children. She attended a French school in the UK and grew up bilingual. However, she hated school and would sit at the back of the class and write stories, which she got away with because her teachers thought she was taking notes. Occasionally, when the boredom got too much, she would throw her friend's shoes out of the window. In the term report, the teacher commented that she would make more progress if she didn't always sit with her feet up on the desk. This still remains her favourite writing position, which is why she now writes in a reclining chair with a cordless keyboard!Aged fourteen, Tabitha Suzuma left school against her parents' wishes. She got a job as an assistant dance teacher and also worked at a centre for children with Cerebral Palsy, which she loved. She continued her education through distance learning and went on to study French Literature at King's College London.After graduating, Tabitha Suzuma taught English as a Foreign Language, dabbled in IT and worked as a freelance translator. She then trained as a primary school teacher and whilst teaching full-time, wrote her first novel.A NOTE OF MADNESS tells the story of seventeen-year-old Flynn Laukonen, a piano prodigy studying at the Royal College of Music in London, who begins to have increasingly extreme mood swings and is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depression, which goes on not just to threaten his career, but also his life. The story was inspired by the author's own struggles with the illness, as well as by her then teenage brother, now training to become a concert pianist at the Royal Academy of Music.In 2004 Tabitha Suzuma left classroom teaching and began to divide her time between writing and tutoring. This gave her time to write her next four novels:FROM WHERE I STAND - a psychological thriller about Raven Winter, a deeply disturbed teenager in foster care who self-harms and harbours a dreadful secret.WITHOUT LOOKING BACK - about teenage dance sensation Louis Whittaker, who suddenly finds himself uprooted from his home along with his brother and sister, and whisked abroad on holiday by his mentally unstable father, until he sees his face on a missing person's poster.A VOICE IN THE DISTANCE - a sequel to A NOTE OF MADNESS about Flynn and his continuing struggle to cope with his bipolar disorder without jeopardising his career or losing the girl he loves.FORBIDDEN - Maya is pretty and talented - sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Lochan is seventeen, gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love.But they are brother and sister.Published in six different languages, this is her most controversial and heart-breaking novel to date.Tabitha Suzuma is currently working on her sixth novel, HURT, due to be published in the UK in 2013.Tabitha Suzuma's books have been shortlisted for a number of awards and she has won the Young Minds Award, the Stockport Book Award, and the Premio Speciale Cariparma for European Literature.More about Tabitha Suzuma and excerpts from all her books can be found on her website:www.tabithasuzuma.com