Win The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping

In Hoxton there’s a shop but it’s not just any old shop; it’s a monster shop. The Hoxton Street Monster Supplies store is London’s, if not the world’s, only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind. It was originally established in 1818 but after closing for a much-needed refurbishment, reopened its doors to monsters and humans alike in 2010. If that wasn’t surprising enough, the monster shop reopened with a secret society lurking in its shadows. Behind the secret door of the Hoxton Street Monter Supplies lies The Ministry of Stories.

The Ministry of Stories is a volunteering organisation which helps young people with all manner of writing, through free one-to-one mentoring and writing workshops. During these projects the children are given the chance to express themselves through writing and are offered the opportunity to have their work published. So far, there have been two anthologies, a whole host of newspapers, a soap opera and today’s competition prize.

In celebration of the launch of the Monster Supplies online shop, we have a copy of The Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping up for grabs.

Congratulations on your interest in this Awfully Bad Guide to Monster Housekeeping. You have taken the first important step on a road to true enlightenment.

Contained within these covers is a wealth of monster wisdom from housekeeping to fashion, food and more as well as activities for the brave reader to try. Each world of ghastly and gruesome knowledge was prepared at the Ministry of Stories by children from local primary schools with the help of top poets and illustrators.

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Baby Be Mine – Paige Toon

Baby Be Mine
Paige Toon

‘He’s not mine, is he?’ That’s the question I fear the most. You see, I have a secret. My son is not fathered by my boyfriend, but by one of the most famous rock stars that ever lived. And he doesn’t even know it.

One-time celebrity personal assistant to wild boy of rock Johnny Jefferson, Meg Stiles is now settled and living in the south of France with her doting boyfriend Christian and their son Barney. But they’re living a lie – a lie that will turn their lives upside down and inside out – because as Barney reaches his first birthday, Meg can no longer deny that her son is growing to look more and more like his rock star father every day, and less and less like Christian, and sooner or later, the world is going to realise…

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25% off GoneReading.com

“If you’re like me, you just can’t imagine living in a world without reading. Unfortunately, for almost a billion people today, that’s exactly where they find themselves. There are countless villages, towns and vast regions of this planet where the power of reading has yet to shine its light.

Gone Reading International, LLC was founded to bring the magic effect of reading and books to places where they don’t exist. We believe that when people have open access to great reading materials, life always changes for the better.  When libraries and reading materials are made available, entire villages, communities and their citizens achieve unprecedented levels of self-sufficiency.”

- Gone Reading

If your nose is always in a book, this statement may have touched you like it did me. Yesterday I was contacted by GoneReading.com, an online gift shop for book lovers, asking if we’d spread the word to our readers about their work.

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The Stag and Hen Weekend – Mike Gayle

The Stag and Hen Weekend
Mike Gayle

The Stag and Hen Weekend is the story of Phil and Helen, a couple in their thirties about to commit their lives to one another… that is of course if they can just manage to get through their respective stag and hen weekends (his: Amsterdam; hers: a country house and day spa in the Peak District) without falling apart.

Told in the unique form of two separate stories that have common characters as well as themes and conclusion, The Stag and Hen Weekend can be read from front to back or from back to front putting the reader in the driver’s seat as to which story they wish to read first. Feisty, fun and thought provoking.

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In Search of Adam – Caroline Smailes

In Search of Adam
Caroline Smailes

A taut and beautifully written debut novel by an exciting and accomplished new author.

Motherless, rootless and unprotected, Jude Williams’ childhood is fractured by the horror and experience of sexual abuse, forcing her to exist somewhere and nowhere in-between childhood and adulthood. Caught within the limitations of her own language and trapped within a family secret, Jude becomes the consequence of her mother’s tragedy. As she moves through the 1980s, Jude’s life is buffeted by choice and destiny and she collects experiences that layer her personal tragedy and plunge her into the darkest of worlds.

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A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin

A Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.

It will stretch from the south, where heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the vast and savage eastern lands; all the way to the frozen north, where an 800-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men… all will play the Game of Thrones.

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Interview With The Vampire – Anne Rice

Interview With The Vampire
Anne Rice

In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life – the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood.

Anne Rice’s compulsively readable novel is arguably the most celebrated work of vampire fiction since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897.

As the Washington Post said on its first publication, it is a ‘thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination … sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable’.

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Mile High Guy – Marisa Mackle

The Mile High Guy
Marisa Mackle

Welcome on board, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Mingling with rich and famous first class passengers is all in a day’s work for Katie. But when she meets a gorgeous, eligible TV star on board a transatlantic flight from New York to Dublin, her whole word is turned upside down.

Adam is everything a woman could want and more. But why is he insisting on keeping their relationship a secret? And is really a member of THAT club?

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The Einstein Girl – Philip Sington

The Einstein Girl
Philip Sington

Two months before Hitler’s rise to power, a beautiful young woman is found naked and near death in the woods outside Berlin.  When she finally wakes from her coma, she can remember nothing, not even her name.  The only clue to her identity is a handbill found nearby, advertising a public lecture by Albert Einstein: ‘On The Present State of Quantum Theory’.

Psychiatrist Martin Kirsch takes the case, little suspecting that this will be his last.  As he searches for the truth about ‘the Einstein Girl’, professional fascination turns to reckless love.  His investigations lead him to a remote corner of Serbia via a psychiatric hospital in Zurich.  There, the inheritor of Einstein’s genius – his youngest son, Eduard – is writing a book that will destroy his illustrious father and, in the process, change the world.

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Bad Sisters – Rebecca Chance

Bad Sisters
Rebecca Chance

Three sisters, one deadly secret.

Deeley is the fake wife of a gay Hollywood hunk. But now her contract is up, and Deeley is left penniless and alone. Devon is married to rugby-hunk Matt, and hosts her own TV cookery show. But behind her buxom facade, Devon is desperately lonely. Maxie is politician’s wife, and fiercely ambitious. So when Deeley threatens to expose their past, just how far will Maxie go to keep it hidden?

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Confessions of a Karaoke Queen – Ella Kingsley

Confessions Of A Karaoke Queen
Ella Kingsley

Maddie Mulhern is suddenly in charge. Her parents – former 80s pop duo Pineapple Mist – have left on a nostalgia tour, entrusting her to manage their struggling karaoke bar, Sing It Back. Panicking over the finances, Maddie takes a gamble: she signs up for a fly-on-the-wall reality TV series. With her faithful staff (divalicious drag queen Ruby, shy barman Simon and wannabe actress Jasmine) she’ll transform the bar into a huge success. Right?

Executive Producer Evan Bergman known that scandal sells. It’s no coincidence that he hires cool, attractive Nick Craven as the TV show’s director. Evan wants drama on screen – and he’ll do anything to get it.

As the series builds to a live finale, will Maddie see the truth in a Careless Whisper? Will Nick be able to keep his Poker Face? One thing’s for sure: we all do things at karaoke we live to regret…

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The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight – Jennifer E. Smith

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
Jennifer E. Smith

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

Imagine if she hadn’t forgotten the book. Or if there hadn’t been traffic on the expressway. Or if she hadn’t fumbled the coins for the toll. What if she’d run just that little bit faster and caught the flight she was supposed to be on? Would it have been something else – the weather over the Atlantic or a fault with the plane?

Hadley isn’t sure if she believes in destiny or fate but, on what is potentially the worst day of each of their lives, it’s the quirks of timing and chance events that mean Hadley meets Oliver…

Set over a 24-hour-period, Hadley and Oliver’s story will make you believe that true love finds you when you’re least expecting it.

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Tracy’s Hot Mail – T. A. Belshaw

Tracy’s Hot Mail
T. A. Belshaw

Tracy is the new girl in the office. A sassy nineteen year old with an eye for cloned fashion and an ear for the latest gossip, she reveals all in a series of emails written to her friend, Emma. Tracy doesn’t spare anyone’s blushes as she dishes the dirt on her friends, family, and foes. If something is worth hearing, it is worth telling…

Everyone gets the Tracy Treatment, her benefit-fiddling father, her porn obsessed boyfriend, even her pocket billiards champion boss. Not forgetting the serial bum pincher and his latest conquest, the office tart.

Behind Tracy’s wide eyed innocence and reassuring smile lies a muck spreader of the highest calibre.

No secret is safe.

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Pure – Julianna Baggott

Pure
Julianna Baggott

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from afar.

Pressia Belze has lived outside of the Dome ever since the detonations. Struggling for survival she dreams of life inside the safety of the Dome with the ‘Pure’.

Partridge, himself a Pure, knows that life inside the Dome, under the strict control of the leaders’ regime, isn’t as perfect as others think.

Bound by a history that neither can clearly remember, Pressia and Partridge are destined to forge a new world.

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