Letterbox Love #95

Letterbox Love is a way to show you all of the lovely, lovely books I’ve gotten in the post, bought and everything else over the last week. Summaries are taken from the cover, or Amazon/NetGalley/Goodreads in the case of e-books, unless otherwise stated. Hosted by Narratively Speaking.

For review:

Get Started in Young Adult Fiction, Juliet Mushens (paperback)

Get Started in Young Adult Fiction provides sensible, easy to follow advice on how to plan, write, edit and publish your first novel for young adults. It will help you understand how genres work, what makes a book suitable for a young adult audience, and how to make the process of writing easier by breaking it down into bite-sized chunks.

Written by a leading literary agent who knows what it takes to make it in this market, this book will give you the advice and tis you need to stand out and get your writing noticed in one of the fastest growing and most popular areas of fiction. You’ll learn how to develop your plot, write relatable characters and convincing dialogue, and bring your story to life. Using editing exercises and workshops, this book will give you the practical tools, encouragement and motivation to write great fiction for young adults and show you how to get it published.

Really curious about this. Thanks Hodder!

Crow Mountain, Lucy Inglis (proof)

While on holiday in Montana, Hope meets local boy Cal Crow, a ranch hand. Caught in a freak accident, the two of them take shelter in a mountain cabin where Hope makes a strange discovery. More than a hundred years earlier, another English girl met a similar fate. Her rescuer: a horse-trader called Nate.

In this wild place, both girls learn what it means to survive and to fall in love, neither knowing that their fates are intimately entwined.

This sounds like it’s going to be an epic, sweeping romance and I can’t wait. Thanks Chicken House!

Darkmere, Helen Maslin (proof)

Outsider Kate has a crush on the coolest boy in school, Leo. He’s inherited a castle, a menacing ruin on the rugged English coast. When he invites her along for the summer, she finally feels part of the gang.

But Darkmere’s empty halls are haunted by dark ghosts. Two centuries ago, Elinor – the young wife of the castle’s brooding master – uncovered a dreadful truth.

As past and present entwine, Kate and Elinor find themselves fighting for their lives – and the ones they love.

Another fab sounding romance from Chicken House! Can’t wait to get stuck in.

Killer Game, Kirsty McKay (paperback)

This is Killer, and you have all been invited to play. And you should play like your life depends on it.

At cate’s isolated boarding school, Killer Game is a tradition. Only a select few are invited to play. They must avoid being ‘killed’ by a series of thrilling pranks, and identify the ‘murderer’.

But this time it’s different: the game stops feeling fake and starts getting dangerous – and Cate’s the next target. Can they find the culprit…before it’s too late?

Really looking forward to this! Thanks Chicken House!

Bought:

For Holly, Tanya Byrne (paperback)

Lola Durand hates her stepmother. It’s a cliché but it’s true.

Lola Durand can’t get through to her father. He never wants to talk about the things that matter: why they had to move to Paris, why he had to marry evil Agatha, and how they can get through the heartache of her mother’s death together.

If he won’t listen, she’ll show him. She’ll show him the truth about his new wife and then her life can go back to normal, just the way she likes it.

Lola Durand knows a secret about her stepmother. She’s going to share it.

I loves Tanya’s books so super excited for this. Took me ages to get hold of though!

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson (e-book)

The last man on earth is not alone…

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth…but he is not alone. Every other man, women and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.

By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

This is one of Jenny of Wondrous Reads’ favourite books and it’s on sale on Kindle! Sounds amazing.

Completely Cassidy: Star Reporter, Tamsyn Murray (e-book)

Latest news from Cassidy Bond, Star Reporter!

So I started this petition to let girls wear trousers at St Jude’s, and everybody’s talking about it – including Kelly, Year Ten editor of the school magazine. And now she’s asked me to be her star reporter – yay!

Even better, I’ve already sniffed out a *big* exclusive. Because someone’s set up a nasty gossip website about people at school – and if I can identify the mystery blogger, it’ll be the scoop of the century!

The first of Cassidy’s adventures was really good fun so I’m looking forward to this!

Life Moves Pretty Fast, Hadley Freeman (trade paperback)

For Hadley Freeman, American movies of the 1980s can teach you quite simply every life-lesson you need to know.

Forget school, in the eighties all you needed was a videostore membership and you’d learn how to be cool (from Bill Murray), how relationships might really work (from When Harry Met Sally…), why your parents matter (from Back to the Future), and even how to deal with the kissing parts (The Princess Bride).

In this personal love letter to the films that shaped her generation’s view of the world, Hadley puts her obsessive movie geekery to good use. She looks back to a more innocent cinematic world in which girls could wear their grandmother’s clothes and still get the guy; in which superheroes were fun (and not agents of a neo-con agenda); in which the greatest teenage rebellion was visiting an art gallery and attending a parade. She considers how the change between movies then and now says so much about society’s changing expectations of women, young people and art/

Funny, fascinating an insightful, Lives Moves Pretty Fast is a truly heartfelt tour of some of the best-loved movies ever made. (And it’ll make you want to go and rewatch Ghostbusters, right now!)

I’ve only read the first chapter, but I’m in LOVE.

Sophie