First 5 Pages February Workshop - Bradley Rev 2

Lisa Bradley
Query Letter
Young Adult Mystery

Dear Ms. Sampsel,

To hold onto her childhood and prove love exists after her parents separate, a sixteen-year-old becomes embroiled in solving a mystery about a missing heiress and an abandoned castle that locals would rather keep quiet.

Tessa Teabold retreats to her grandparents’ cottage in a sleepy river town in upstate New York. Her plan is simple: a summer job to help save for art school while her parents work on their marriage.

Tess meets local golden boy Ryan Cafferty, the boss’s son, who’s determined to clear his brother’s name after an arrest. A series of suspicious forest fires draws Tess and Ryan into a fifty-year-old mystery involving a castle on a nearby river island. Caught trespassing by the island’s reclusive groundskeeper, they are forced to flee. Using obituaries, recollections from town elders, and an old treasure map, Tess and Ryan unravel the connection between Temple Island and Ryan’s family. The discovery results in a fiery showdown at the castle that might cost Tess and Ryan their lives.

I enjoyed your interview posted on Adventures in YA Publishing and understand you are seeking YA with a strong voice. ISLAND SHADOWS is a YA mystery with strokes of magical realism, complete at 80,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Melina Marchetta’s Jellicoe Road and Jessi Kirby’s Golden.

ISLAND SHADOWS won the Cape Cod Writers Center Writing Contest judged by Sara Pennypacker and was a finalist for the Beacon Award (2014). Thank you for your consideration.


Name: Lisa Bradley
Genre: Young Adult Mystery
Title: Island Shadows


The tickets in my hand are softened and creased, the text nearly rubbed off in spots. I trace their faces with the underside of my thumb.

Three tickets.

“Maybe later today we’ll go fishing, Tess.” Gramps meets my eyes and then drops his gaze to my hands. “Like old times.”

“I’ll probably draw in my sketchbook.” I slide the tickets back in my sweater pocket.

Gramps’s Oldsmobile ‘88 heads toward town for my morning shift at Cafferty’s General Store. For two weeks now this has been our routine.

Leaning my head against the window glass, I follow the river as it hugs the highway. I can barely see across to the other side, which is Canada, because a dozen wooded islands crowd my view.

I bought the art museum tickets thinking I’d surprise my parents for their anniversary. I’m three-hundred miles away now, and I’m still holding onto them.

“Tessy, I hope you know none of this is your fault.”

I’m afraid Gramps will say something else, but he doesn’t.

My fingers begin to creep toward my sweater pocket, but I make a fist instead.

I count five fishing boats bobbing on the water, reminding me of the mornings when Dad, Gramps and I used to troll for stripers. We’d be up with the sun, nibbling donuts, waiting, trying to lure fish with our sticky crumbs.

I wonder if the people on the boats are feeding the fish.

On the highway ahead, flashing lights pull my eyes away from the boats.

Gramps hits the brakes and we stop beside a young-ish looking police officer standing in the middle of the road. Gramps lowers his window; a smell like burning leaves curls inside. “What’s all this, Officer?”

“Another fire.” The policeman leans toward the window. “Just making sure it’s contained. Keep your speed down the next few miles and stay out of the woods.”

Gramps meets the officer’s eyes and nods once, his face tight. He pushes the button, and the window rolls up.

“Dry these last few days.” Gramps grips the wheel. The freckled brown spots on his hands are darker than I remember, and his blue eyes seem glassier too. “Predicting a shower for tomorrow.”

We pass a ladder truck and a fire and rescue vehicle farther up the road, their lights spinning but no sirens.

Growing up in the city you’d think I’d be used to flashing lights, but for some reason this bothers me. Silver Head seems so untroubled. It’s hard to imagine anything bad ever happening here.  That’s one of the reasons I came back.

When my sophomore year ended, my parents agreed to let me spend the summer at Gran and Gramps’s cottage along the Silver Head River. Thought it might help me “deal with things.”

On the highway, the burning leaves odor seeps in the Olds’ air vents making my nose itch. The police cruiser and fire truck lights continue to spin in the side-view mirror until the road curves and I can’t see them anymore.

I don’t know what my face looks like but Gramps must see something there. He clears his throat, the burning leaves must be getting to him too, smiles weakly, but his expression seems rolled up like the window.

We pull in a parking spot across from Cafferty’s. The summer job isn’t the local library like I’d hoped, but Mike Cafferty pays me decent money for helping him and his sons.

“Sorry you have to keep dropping me off.”

Gramps waves his hand like it’s no big deal. Town is too far a walk from the house. Even though I passed my driver’s test earlier this year, there’s only the Oldsmobile to share between the three of us.

After saying goodbye, I cross the street and head toward Cafferty’s. The windows are wallpapered with yellowed ads and fliers. Paint peels along the edges of the windows.

Mike Cafferty’s in the center of three people on the sidewalk, probably exchanging tidbits about the fire or the weather.  He salutes me and smiles, his dark eyes crinkling at the edges.

The familiar sounds of bells rattle against the glass as I open the front door. Ryan Cafferty, Mike’s youngest son, who’s about a year older than me, glances up from behind the counter. His sandy-colored hair is a few shades darker, probably still damp from his morning swim. “Mornin’, Tessa.”

Mumbling hello, I stash my backpack in the staff office behind the front counter and get to work.
My drawing pad and pencils go everywhere with me, even though I haven’t sketched in weeks. The block is temporary. I’m sure I’ll be back to it in no time. Money I earn at the store this summer is going straight in my art school abroad fund.

Every morning, except weekends, I ring up Tootsie Pops and bouncy balls for frazzled parents whose children pull at the hems of their Bermuda shorts. I used to be one of those kids. For ten days every summer, my t-shirts smelled like peach juice, bug spray and diesel fuel. Five years ago, when I was eleven, we stopped coming to the river. Right around the time Mom quit painting and took a job at a bank in mid-town.

“Tess,” Ryan calls.

My eyes pivot from Ryan to the register in my little corner of the shop. Crap. The register’s jammed up again. Paper is choking out of the receipt slot and the machine starts beeping. Ryan puts down the produce box he’s hauling and jogs over.

A woman and twin toddler boys stare at me from inside the enclave of the gift shop. The twins are already sucking on their Tootsie Pops.

“Sorry,” Ryan mutters to the mother. He slides behind the counter beside me where it’s already cramped. A familiar not unpleasant whiff of spice mixes with something potent, probably chlorine. Same scent as every morning, not that I notice.

Ryan jabs a few buttons on the cash register and pulls a stream of register tape off the machine. The whole thing takes about three seconds, and while he’s working, I follow his fingernails which are unnaturally white.

The woman pays, and after a curt smile, she guides the children away.

Ryan leans his long torso against the counter, wadding up the wasted register tape in a ball. “So,” he says, dunking the ball in a nearby wastebasket, “what’s with the sweater every day?”

“I—I get cold.” I play with a loose button.

“This. This is warm.” He raises his arms and gives me a hundred-watt smile I bet all the girls fall for. “It’s eighty degrees.”

Bells rattle, and Mike summons Ryan to carry a bag of charcoal bricks out to a customer’s car. “Later,” he says.

My fingers fumble with the button. What I don’t tell Ryan Cafferty is that I prefer the weight of my sweater.

Running my hand down my side, I slide out the three tickets. Shuffling through them, I wish I’d thought to leave them home, two at least. Under my parents’ lamp on the nightstand or on the cork board by the telephone, somewhere they’d find them. Dad wouldn’t let the tickets go to waste.

A part of me wanted to stay in the city and scream, stomp my feet and say they couldn’t do this to our family. But a larger part of me wanted to leave.

Turning toward the wastebasket, I consider tossing the tickets in the trash beside the ball of register tape. Instead, I stuff them back in my pocket and get back to work.