In My Mailbox - Sunday 3rd July

I wasn't going to do an In My Mailbox because I'm on holiday, but then I popped into work because I got a message saying my in tray was clogged with packages! These are the goodies I picked up. I also got a second copy of Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star, so obviously I'm really very special.

Ruby Redford: Look Into My Eyes by Lauren Child

Technically this wasn't a package I picked up in the post, because it was in a goodie bag I received at the superb launch party. This book doesn't come with a blurb, but it IS a spin off from the Clarice Bean novels. In those novels, Clarice is obsessed with reading the Ruby Redfort books, and now they are REAL!!! It's all very meta... 

This book also has proper actual code puzzles throughout, devised by the excellent mathematician Professor Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford University. 

I've read the first 50 pages (on my way home from the party) and it's like reading a mash-up of The Incredibles, Richie Rich and Harriet the Spy. I also know for a fact, because Lauren Child said so, that the 80s TV show Hart to Hart was a massive influence. Truefact. 

You'll  be able to buy a finished copy (with a GREAT front cover) in October 2011

Kill All Enemies by Melvin Burgess

Ever felt like you just don't fit in?

Everyone says fourteen year old Billie is nothing but trouble. A fighter. A danger to her family and friends. But her care worker sees someone different.

Her classmate Rob is big, strong. He can take care of himself and his brother. But his violent stepdad sees someone to humiliate.

And Chris is struggling at school. He just doesn't want to be there. But his dad sees a useless no-hoper.

Billie, Rob and Chris each have a story to tell but there are two sides to every story, and the question is... who do you believe?

Hard-hitting, shocking and powerful, and on the shelves of bookshops from the 1st September

Stealing Phoenix by Joss Stirling

Catch a thief, and lose your heart.

Phoenix is a thief, Yves is a genius. Two different worlds, one amazing love story.

On bookshop shelves from September 2011

Bloodstone by Gillian Philip

(proof cover is really shiny black, and my camera didn't like it! )

For centuries, Seth and Conal have hunted for the Bloodstone Kate wants, without success. Homesick, and determined to ensure their clann's safety, they've also made secret forays across the Veil. One of these illicit crossings has violent consequences that will devastate both their close family and, eventually, their entire clann.

In the otherworld, Jed Cameron - a feral, fullmortal young thief - becomes entangled with the strange and dangerous Finn MacAngus and her shadowy uncles. When he is dragged accidentally into the world of the Sithe, it's nothing he can't handle - but that's before time warps around him, and the danger reaches out to threaten his infant brother.

In the collision of two worlds, conflict and tragedy are inevitable - especially when treachery comes fro the most shocking of quarters. 

The sequel to Firebrand, and on shelves... actually it doesn't say when. Probably soon...!

Corsets and Clockwork - 13 Steampunk Romances, edited by Trisha Telep

When good hearts battle evil, resistance is automated. From magical outcasts to kindred spirits, feisty heroines to genius inventors, to war zones and supernatural rituals, idealistic young heroes skulk through the dangerous streets of the soot-choked city of industry, while lovelorn humanity trembles on the brink, all soft flesh and corsets in a sharp world of blood-sucking machines and technomagical desire.

But you can still find your true love - piece by spring-loaded, electro-magnetic, super-charged piece - if only you keep listening for the tick, tick, tick.

This was a guilty pleasure purchase, and is out now!

Who knows what more goodies I will receive when I go back to work on July 11th... 

xxx