We hope you'll be inspired, shocked, amused, and touched by this selection of letters from the DearTeenMe.com website. 'How awesome would it be if authors wrote letters to their teen selves?' A year and a half later, you can pick up DEAR TEEN ME from Zest Books, read more on the website, or just kick back and enjoy the selection we'll be posting here. Co-curators: E. Kristin Anderson and Priya Chand. The individual letters are property of the contributing authors. We can't guarantee your head won't explode from the mix of angst and excitement, but you *will* enjoy the ride.

It was Rory’s Grandma that made the two predictions; the day of her own death, and the day Rory would die. Nobody really takes Grandma seriously – that is, until she suddenly passes away on the exact date she’s predicted. In a fit of panic, Rory decides to embark on a bizarre, crazed mission to live life to the full. Together with her friends, she throws the rulebook out of the window and tastes what the world has to offer; excessively wild nights, malicious revenge plans, and arrogant, beautiful boys. Rory thinks she has nothing to lose. But her family is slowly starting to crumble, and her friends are getting sick of her reckless attitude. There’s only so long she can party before the terror of her deathday rolls around. Rory has to choose between bowing out disgracefully, with her name seared into the town’s memory – or fighting the out-of-control girl she’s become before it’s too late.

Okie's fifteen. She lives in New York. She's got a few problems: she's failing geography, her dad's a wimp, and her mother, Sumatra, is a stone cold bitch. But things get a lot worse when Sumatra turns into a zombie and eats Okie's dad. Clio, Okie's grandmother, lives in Toronto; but since the zombie apocalypse, Toronto's a lot further away than it used to be. Clio suggests that Okie transport Sumatra across the border, because family is family. But coaching Okie by cellphone isn't easy, and Clio has some zombies of her own to contend with. Luckily she has some garden tools. Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood team up for this unusual two-hander. Encompassing love, death, sex, and the meaning of family, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home will surprise, delight, and convince you of the vital importance of keeping ready supplies of rhubarb and mini-wieners in your freezer at all times. The story unfolds beginning October 24.

For Carter Vance, popularity is a world that she has purposely distanced herself from for many years. Why feed in to the totally superficial, social hierarchy of high school? She's perfectly happy being an outsider. But when she's challenged to prove that anyone can be popular, she puts everything on the line to make a point - that popularity is as fickle and cliché as all the teen movies make it out to be. What she does instead is ruin her true friendships, hurt the only guy who has ever mattered, and dig herself a hole that's much more complicated than the plot of all of her favourite movies combined. {Book 1 in the Teenage Guide series}