Welcome to the YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! On this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize—one lucky winner will receive one book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 120 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are SIX contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the BLUE TEAM—but there is also a red team, a gold team, a green team, a purple team, and a pink team for a chance to win a whole different set of books!

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

Scavenger Hunt Puzzle

Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the blue team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).

Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, April 8 at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

Today, I am hosting Kathleen Baldwin for the YA Scavenger Hunt!

Award-winning author Kathleen Baldwin loves adventure in books AND in real life. She taught rock climbing in the Rockies, survival camped in the desert, was stalked by a mountain lion, lost an argument with a rattlesnake, enjoyed way too many classes in college, fell in love at least a dozen times, and finally married her very own hero.

I’m super excited to be doing the YA Scavenger Hunt again. It’s fun to get to know new-to-me authors and check out their amazing books. This year there are at least 17 authors I’ve never met, including Kathleen, featured below, and LM, who I’ve linked to at the end of this post. So without further adieu, here’s Kathleen!

Thank you, Melanie, for hosting me on the YASH hunt. Your blog is lovely and your books look like so much fun! I can’t wait to read one. Today I’m going to give readers a fun guide on…

How to Shop Like a Historical Spy Girl!

If you were a young lady in 1814 and didn’t fit society’s norms, your parents might send you away to a reform school or a finishing school. The most notorious school of all was Stranje House. It had a very dark reputation, and there were rumors that the headmistress tortured the girls until they straightened up and stopped doing stuff that made people nervous. It was A School for Unusual Girls.

Young ladies back then were supposed to dress in pale colors, look completely innocent, and never ever EVER talk about anything unpleasant, like mathematics, business, or the awful war that was raging across Europe.

But the headmistress, Miss Stranje is actually training these unusually gifted young ladies to do something more than paint pretty watercolors, sing sweet ballads, and waltz their way into an advantageous marriage. She’s training her young ladies to be spies in the war with Napoleon.

Still, they are young ladies, and they liked to shop even back then, and even if they were spies.

So how do you shop when you’re a spy girl in 1814?

Well…let’s start with gloves. Totally a fashion no—no, to leave the house without gloves. Which meant a young lady must have many pairs; white ones, pink ones, silk ones, kidskin, velvet, lace—all kinds.

Tess, the heroine in book two, Exile for Dreamers, is an expert in combat. She’s hoping to find a pair of elbow length evening gloves, loose enough to hide her favorite dagger.

Miss Maya Barrington, heroine in the upcoming fourth book in the Stranje House series, Harbor for the Nightingale, is looking for a poison ring to hide a sleeping powder. One never knows when one might need to use it to escape a tricky situation.

We mustn’t forget about feathers! They were a hot item back in the day, a very big deal. Women wore enormous emu feathers and fluffy ostrich feathers. Sometimes they dyed them to match their ballgowns; more often, they kept them pristine white. The longer the feathers, the better. It was a symbol of wealth and prestige.

Lady Jane, the heroine in book 3, Refuge for Masterminds, doesn’t care about long prestigious feathers. She’s scours the shops in Cheapside for a few feathers fat enough to hide her two best lockpicks. She finds the perfect plump specimens, and uses them to hide the picks in her hair at a musical evening at the Prince Regent’s palace. If only those lockpicks hadn’t gotten her into so much trouble later.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I did have to learn how to pick a lock so I could write this story. Lady Jane was a delight to write. This is the book I’ll send you if you win the scavenger hunt.

Check out Refuge for Masterminds and the rest of the award-winning Stranje House series on Amazon.

You can find Kathleen at:
Her website
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads
Instagram

Refuge for Masterminds

In this game of wits, the stakes are life and death.

Napoleon has escaped from Elba. Britain is at war on four fronts. At Stranje House, a School for Unusual Girls, five young ladies are secretly being trained for a world of spies, diplomacy, and war. . . But someone at Stranje House is sneaking information to Napoleon’s ruthless spies, Lady Daneska and Ghost.

Lady Jane’s desperate hunt for the traitor ensnares the young American inventor, Alexander Sinclair, Robert Fulton’s nephew, into a deadly ambush. Sinclair is the most maddening young man in all of Christendom, a sharp-tongued rascal with boorish manners. But Jane cannot bear the thought of anyone harming the golden-haired genius.

She doesn’t consider herself a mastermind. It’s just that Jane tends to grasp the facts of a situation quickly. By so doing, she’s able to implement a sensible course of action. But will Lady Jane be clever enough to save Alexander, her friends at Stranje House, and possibly England itself?

 

And don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of books by me, Kathleen, and many more! To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is 17. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the blue team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!

Continue the Hunt

To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author: LM Preston! She was born in Washington, DC, loved to create poetry and short-stories as a young girl, and has an obsessive desire to write and create stories of young people who overcome unbelievable odds. So go check her out!

Before You Go! Enter to Win a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Just click the image below to enter to win!

As a reward for getting to the bottom on this LONNNNNGGGGGG post, here’s a picture of my dog Owen. You can find more of him here.