Sunday Summary 3rd April

Here we go again, with the SIX best things I’ve found on the web this week!

Hay Festival line-up looks absolutely amazing and I’m waiting eagerly for tickets to go on sale to the general public! The events I’m most interested in are Caroline Lawrence talking about the Western Mysteries, Cerys Matthews with poetry and songs on Welsh legends, CHERUB author Robert Muchamore discussing his new series, the ‘dream team’ of Darren Shan and Charlie Higson doing a joint talk, and the fabulous Keren David pairing with Peter Cocks to talk about flawed heroes, plot twists and danger.


UK residents – there’s a great competition for 13-18 year olds to enter at Penguin’s fantastic Spinebreakers site. Write a poem with the theme of ‘Cursed Lovers’ by using song titles! Entries to be judged by the superb Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, authors of the amazing Caster Chronicles, and there’s a year’s supply of Divine chocolate to be won! Closing date is the end of April.


I loved reading Richard Denning’s blog post on how he researched history when writing The Amber Treasure, which is set deep in the Dark Ages. While The Amber Treasure is still on my to-read list, having read The Last Seal and Tomorrow’s Guardian and loved both I’m in awe of the amount of preparation Richard does to get things right in his superb books.


Even though I don’t read that much adult fiction compared to the amount of YA I get through, The Wolf Letters by Will Schaefer looks superb! Great review on The Tales Compendium.


Bloody Bookaholic has a fantastic selection of covers for the coming month! I LOVE the ones for Boyfriends with Girlfriends and Abandon in particular – what’s your favourite?


I normally just pick five but here’s an extra – bargain of the week goes to The Recruit, first in Robert Muchamore’s action packed CHERUB series which is just £1.99 on Amazon.co.uk – I’ve read some dissenting views on CHERUB but personally find them to be hugely exciting and would definitely recommend taking a look at that price.