Competition - A Brief History of Montmaray

Michelle Cooper's sophomoric title, A Brief History of Montmaray was released last year in Australia. Since then A Brief History of Montmaray has won the Ethel Turner Prize for young people's literature and was a finalist in the Golden Inky Award (Australian Centre for Youth Literature). The title will be released in the United States through Knopf Books for Young Readers on the 13th of October, 2009.

Here's your chance to win your own, personally signed copy of A Brief History of Montmaray before it's American release (competition open internationally).

All you need to do is...name your own island kingdom. Michelle named hers, Montmaray. If you had written a novel featuring an island between France and Spain - what would your island be called? Michelle will choose the lucky winner and the book will be sent to you shortly. All entries need to be posted in the comments section along with an email address.

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Description - I need to write down what has just happened. I need to set down the truth. If I write lies or if I write nothing at all, this journal is worthless. I must do this, in case anything happens. All right. This is what happened tonight, every single terrible thing that I can remember . . .'

Sophie FitzOsborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray, along with her tomboy younger sister Henry, her beautiful, intellectual cousin Veronica, and Veronica's father, the completely mad King John.

When Sophie receives a leather-bound journal for her sixteenth birthday, she decides to write about her day-to-day life on the island. But it is 1936 and the world is in turmoil. Does the arrival of two strangers threaten everything Sophie holds dear?

Similar to...Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now.

Competition closes - 22nd June 2009.