STRUCTURING YOUR NOVEL by KM Weiland is one of the best new writing books on how to plot your story. Here's what you'll find inside:

 Seven Keys to a Great Hook
Five Elements of a Riveting First Line
Dream Sequences in Beginnings
Characters... -- Kinds of characters, how many are needed, differentiating between characters, stakes for characters.

Weiland says: "The beginning and the ending are two halves of the same whole. . . They're mirror imanges . . . The beginning asks a question and the ending answers it. If the ending fails to answer the specific question set out in the beginning, the whole book will fail"(p. 24).

http://www.amazon.com/Structuring-Your-Novel-Essential-Outstanding/dp/0985780401/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378221633&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Sturcturing+Your+Novel+--+Weiland