Undercover

What's the reason you decide to buy a book? 

Is it the cover? The blurb? Or, do you need to open the book and read the very first line before you part with your money?

We've been looking at quite a few of our books here at Walker Books, and they have some cracking first lines. 

So... every friday we're going to upload a picture of a first line on twitter and facebook. It won't always be an Undercover book, or even a YA book, but we want to know what you think of it as a first line. Or tell us if you know where it's from. Or if you've read the book already. And, if, you have, what did you think?

So, without further ado, here's our first ever #firstlinefriday pic. Comment with your thoughts on the blog, or let us know on Twitter.

So... the movie of City of Bones is really starting to gather momentum.

Jace and Clary have been cast for a while now, and from what we can tell (from our friends over at Sugarscape) it seems that leads Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower are getting pretty close in real life, too... Find out more about the suspected budding romance on Sugarscape.


But in the last couple of weeks, we've had some pretty major casting news, and it's coming thick and fast. Here's a little round-up of characters...

Irish actor Robert Sheehan, of Misfits fame. Cassandra Clare talks about his audition. Cassandra Clare talks about his on-screen chemistry with Jace and Clary.

Actor and supermodel Godfrey Gao. Read Cassandra Clare's thoughts on the casting...

French actress Jemima West. Read Cassandra Clare's thoughts on her audition.

Lena Headey, who plays Cercei in Game of Thrones. She also played Sarah Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Find out Cassandra Clare's first thoughts on her blog.

Jared Harris, who played English gentleman Lane Pryce in Mad Men. He was also Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. This guy can seriously act (Mad Men fans will surely attest to this). Read why Cassandra Clare thinks Jared will make a great Hodge.

The monster showed up at midnight.

As they do.

But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting.

He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

In a unique pairing of Carnegie Medal winners, Patrick Ness spins an extraordinarily moving tale of love, loss and hope from the final idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself.

A Monster Calls won both the 2012 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, the first book ever to do so. It also won the Galaxy National Book Tokens Children's Book of the Year Award and the Red House Children's Book Award 2012. To celebrate this once in a generation book, we're running a giveaway on Goodreads at the moment.

You can read a sample chapter below.

We're now into the third week of Zoe Marriott's blog tour for Frostfire... and the topic for this week is Women in Fantasy. You can read Zoe's thoughts about this topic on Narratively Speaking now. Zoe has also written fantastic blog posts for Serendipity Reviews and Sister Spooky, on the process of writing fantasy, and inspirational fantasy writers. If you haven't already read these posts, check them out. Next week, Zoe writes about the recent evolution of YA fantasy for The Pewter Wolf before she ends the blog tour at Book Angel Booktopia talking about the creation of fantasy worlds. You can also read an extract of Frostfire, and watch the trailer below. Enjoy!