Book is tight with 1/8" tilt; age tanning is mild and uniform. The usual ex-library traces of pocket, stamps, tape-marks where DJ protector was attached, etc.

Prisoner of Fire, a rare novel by Edmund Cooper. I say rare because while there was a British hardcover and paperback, but in the U.S.A. there was only a hardcover edition (and that Walker edition was not widely known.) Cooper was a British "midlist" author who produced over 2 dozen SF novels or collections, mostly in the Sixties and Seventies. I acquired a taste for his novels. [Summary from the jacket copy of the hardcover, which gives a little more detail than the paperback back cover copy.]

Vanessa Smith is an orphan, a lonely and intelligent girl of seventeen who possesses great paranormal powers. A virtual prisoner at Random Hill Residential School, she is determined to escape. Along with other gifted children she is constantly forced to develop and disipline her telepathic ability for the supposed good of the state. Sir Joseph Humbolt, ruthless and dictatorial Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is forcing a bill through Parliament that will give him absolute power to seek out and exploit paranormal talent wherever it exists. Vanessa escapes, causing a political embarrassment for Sir Joseph. Questions are asked in the House. So it became politically necessary not only that Vanessa should cease to exist but also that it appear that she never existed at all. Orders are given to "erase" all official records and for Vanessa herself to be "taken out." A fugitive in the South of England, cold and exhausted, Vanessa unconsiously establishes telepathic rapport with the mother she has never known. Jenny, her mother, is also caught up in the nightmare as the security forces tighten their net. Meanwhile, Marius Raeder, sometime Professor of Paranormal Psychology, plots to destroy his old enemy, Sir Joseph Humbolt. Vanessa is vital to Professor Raeder's plan for a unique and terrible act of destruction...