Last Chance to Win Free Books! (Until the Next Contest :)

Whew!  Not gonna lie, I never thought it would be this difficult to get people motivated to win free books.  I mean, hello, free books!  Who would have thought the letters of the alphabet could be more tantalizing than a contest?  Color me baffled.

So, just a reminder that tonight is the cutoff to click here and participate in the Name Game Contest.  You can win up to four YA titles generously donated by Jody, my sales rep at Scholastic Trade. 

Winners will be announced on Wednesday.  After that, I'll probably take a break for a while, as I can practically hear crickets chirping over here at Writer's Blog since the A-Z Challenge started.

Good luck and thank you to everyone who partipated/linked/tweeted, and to those who follow along!

Here's a recap of the prizes:

An ARC of ABANDON by Meg Cabot.  First in a trilogy, pub date April 26th:

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at

once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . .. because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.



But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.


Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.

FEVER CRUMB by Philip Reeve:

Fever Crumb is a girl who has been adopted and raised by Dr. Crumb, a member of the order of Engineers, where she serves as apprentice. In a time and place where women are not seen as reasonable creatures, Fever is an anomaly, the only female to serve in the order. Soon though, she must say goodbye to Dr. Crumb-nearly the only person she's ever known-to assist archeologist Kit Solent on a top-secret project. As her work begins, Fever is plagued by memories that are not her own and Kit seems to have a particular interest in finding out what they are. Fever has also been

singled out by city-dwellers who declare her part Scriven. The Scriveners, not human, ruled the city some years ago but were hunted down and killed in a victorious uprising by the people. If there are any remaining Scriven, they are to be eliminated. All Fever knows is what she's been told: that she is an orphan. Is Fever a Scriven? Whose memories does she hold? Is the mystery of Fever, adopted daughter of Dr. Crumb, the key to the secret that lies at the heart of London?

WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED by Judy Blundell:

When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two.

As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?

An ARC of THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE by Jeff Hirsch (pub date September 1st)

The wars that followed The Collapse nearly destroyed civilization. Now, twenty years later, the world is faced with a choice—rebuild what was or make something new.



Stephen Quinn, a quiet and dutiful fifteen-year-old scavenger, travels Post-Collapse America with his Dad and stern ex-Marine Grandfather. They travel light. They keep to themselves. Nothing ever changes. But when his Grandfather passes suddenly and Stephen and his Dad decide to risk it all to save the lives of two strangers, Stephen's life is turned upside down. With his father terribly injured, Stephen is left alone to make his own choices for the first time.


Stephen’s choices lead him to Settler's Landing, a lost slice of the Pre-Collapse world where he encounters a seemingly benign world of barbecues, baseball games and days spent in a one-room schoolhouse. Distrustful of such tranquility, Stephen quickly falls in with Jenny Tan, the beautiful town outcast. As his relationship with Jenny grows it brings him into violent conflict with the leaders of Settler's Landing who are determined to remake the world they grew up in, no matter what the cost.