Michelle Paver has won this year's Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for Ghost Hunter, the sixth and final book in her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.
It's relatively rare for a book late in a series to win a major prize but it was aunanimous choice by the judges who said it is "a towering achievement, as a whole as well as in terms of the individual books."
The shortlist for the £1500 prize included Maurice Gleitzman's Now, Gregory Hughes's Unhooking the Moon and Eva Ibbotson's The Ogre of Oglefort. Michelle Paver now joins a distinguished line of past winners, which includes Ted Hughes, Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine and Philip Pullman.
The Guardian children's fiction prize was founded in 1967 and is unique in that it is judged by children's authors themselves, and can only be won once by any single author.
More information and author interview.
