Carpe Diem, Paperback

Truman Readers Award

In this delightful romantic adventure, a 16-year-old overachiever learns how to seize the day.

"I've got my entire life planned out for the next ten years -- including my PhD and Pulitzer Prize," claims 16-year-old overachiever Vassar Spore, daughter of overachiever parents, who in true overachiever fashion named her after an elite women's college.

Vassar expects her sophomore summer to include AP and AAP (Advanced Advanced Placement) classes. Surprise Enter a world-traveling relative who sends her plans into a tailspin when she blackmails Vassar's parents into forcing their only child to backpack with her through Southeast Asia.

On a journey from Malaysia to Cambodia to the remote jungles of Laos, Vassar sweats, falls in love, hones her outdoor survival skills -- and uncovers a family secret that turns her whole world upside-down.

Vassar Spore can plan on one thing: she'll never be the same again.

About the Author:

Squat toilets, profuse sweating, bamboo huts, jumbo centipedes-these are just some of the delights Autumn Cornwell has encountered in her global travels. Not to mention the can't-believe-it's-true Laotian jungle adventure which inspired Carpe Diem.
A travel junkie, Autumn has explored 22 countries and counting. She's spent the last couple summers working with refugees and orphans in Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Southeast Asia remains close to her heart since her days as a missionary kid in New Papua-where she ate her weight in guavas and mingled with reformed headhunters and cannibals. Which was nothing compared to navigating the intrepid jungles of the TV & Film Industry, where she spent most of her career.
Autumn lives in Los Feliz, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, with her husband JC, and their son Dexter. Carpe Diem is her first novel.