EVERYTHING changes for Judy Manners when her mother runs off to an artists’ commune on a remote Scottish island. Overnight, 15-year-old Judy goes from being a normal happy teenager to depressed and introverted - and that’s before a Polish punk moves in with her father, compounding her misery.

Judy desperately wants to visit her mother, but has no encouraged from her, and her father forbids it.

Feeling alone and abandoned, she begins to write about her experiences, trying to make sense of her chaotic emotions. Suspecting that both her parents are deeply unhappy, despite their new lives, she makes it her mission to reunite them, and soon she starts to piece together various clues.

Trusting her instincts and encouraged by her boyfriend, Milo, she embarks on a coming-of-age journey of discovery, following in her mother’s footsteps, using her father’s psychological skills to guide her.

It’s a dangerous quest that takes her to the dark heart of London’s drug scene and through Glasgow’s mean streets, eventually to the Isle of Mull, where it seems her mum is leading an idyllic existence in her commune with a man she believes to be her soulmate. Then tragedy strikes - but might it lead to her parents being reunited?

Just in Disguise is a warm, tender work of teenage fiction by Bradford author Dr Andrew Liddle, which captures the heartache, joy, strength and vulnerability of youth.

He touches on several themes for adolescent readers, including shyness, introversion and depression, drugs awareness, religious tolerance, sibling rivalry, parental responsibilities and coming of age

Dr Liddle is a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, contributing articles, reviews, poetry and blogs to a variety of publications. This is his third book this year. His last book, Brag Of My Heart, was a re-imagining of the final hours of Sylvia Plath.

In Judy in Disguise, he again explores the thoughts and feelings of a female protagonist, narrated in the first-person.

Approaching her 16th birthday, Judy feels she's going through a premature ‘midlife crisis’, triggered by her parents' separation and her mother's departure.

“I have two daughters, in writing this book to some extent I tried to imagine what they might have gone through if their parents had divorced,” says Dr Liddle. “My own parents did, many years ago when I was in my teens at a time when divorce was much less common than today. I guess the pain of it has never gone away for me.”

In addition to her heartbreak, Judy goes through the ups and downs of being a teenager, dealing with exams, falling in love and trying to make sense of the world.

“The novel is set in Richmond-on-Thames, Glasgow and to the Isle of Mull, three contrasting places I know quite well,” says Dr Liddle. “Judy’s story, her return to Scotland and her relationship with Milo continues in the sequel, Dusty Bluebells, to be published later in the year.”