Book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Title: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Author: Muriel Barbury
Published: 2005 (2008 in the US)
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 325
Summary on Goodreads: We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Check out the author's other book: Gourmet Rhapsody

Book: The Sea

Title: The Sea
Author: John Banville
Published: 2005
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 195
Summary on Goodreads: In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel -- among the finest we have had from this masterful writer. 

Note: Won the Man Booker Prize and others in 2005

Also check out some of the author's other books: The Freddie Montgomery Trilogy
The Untouchable
Ancient Light
The Infinities

Series: The Indian in the Cupboard

Series: Indian in the Cupboard
Author: Lynne Reid Banks
Started: 1980
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Genre: Magical Realism
Order of Books: The Indian in the Cupboard
The Return of the Indian
The Secret of the Indian
The Mystery of the Cubboard
The Key to the Indian
Summary of first book on Goodreads: At first, Omri is unimpressed with the plastic Indian toy he is given for his birthday. But when he puts it in his old cupboard and turns the key, something extraordinary happens that will change Omri's life for ever. 
For Little Bull, the Iroquois Indian brave, comes to life...

Book: The Fairy Rebel

Title: The Fairy Rebel
Author: Lynne Reid Banks
Published: 1985
Category: Childrens/Middle-grade
Genre: Fantasy, Faeries
Pages: 117
Summary on Goodreads: The Fairy Queen strictly forbids fairies from using their magic power on humans. But after Tiki accidentally meets Jan, a woman who is desperate for a baby daughter, she finds it impossible to resist fulfilling her wish. Now up against the dark and vicious power of evil, this fairy rebel must face the Queen's fury with frightening and possibly fatal results.

Book: The Wasp Factory

Title: The Wasp Factory
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1984
Category: Adult/YA (can count as both)
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 184
Summary on Goodreads: Frank — no ordinary sixteen-year-old — lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago; his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return — an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

If you like this, check out the author's many other books: The Crow Road
Complicity
The Bridge
Whit
Espedair Street
Dead Air
The Business
Walking On Glass
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
and many more, the author has written almost thirty books

Book: The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Title: The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Author: Melissa Bank
Published: 1998
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Romance
Pages: 288
Summary on Goodreads: Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, and relationships as well as the treacherous waters of the workplace. With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out issues of the heart, puts a new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.

Also check out the author's other book: The Wonder Spot

Series: Chasing Vermeer

Series: Chasing Vermeer
Author: Blue Balliett
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Started: 2004
Genre: Mystery
Order of Books: Chasing Vermeer
The Wrights
The Calder Game
Pieces and Players
Summary of first book on Goodreads: A puzzling art theft is solved by two sixth-grade sleuths in a first-rate first novel by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Series of Unfortunate Events artist Brett Helquist. Cut from similar cloth to The Da Vinci Code while harkening back to E. L. Konigsburg and Agatha Christie, Balliett's book follows young Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay as they piece together separate, seemingly disconnected events to locate The Lady Writing, a Vermeer painting that gets stolen en route to Chicago's Art Institute. Going on the theory that there are no coincidences, the two wonder about the link between their teacher's statements, Petra's dreams, a book Petra finds in the library, and other clues that set the reader guessing as to their significance as well. But after they learn of the culprit's aim to correct untruths about Vermeer's life and art -- which spurs them into full-throttle detective work -- the pieces all come together in a brilliant ending sure to make readers cheer, "Ah ha!"

Author: James Baldwin

Author: James Baldwin
Category: Modern Classic, Non-Fiction
Mostly wrote: during the 50s and 60s, a few during the 70s
Genre mostly wrote: Realistic Fiction, Essays
Some of His Major Books: Go Tell It on the Mountain
Giovanni's Room
Notes of a Native Son
The Fire Next Time
Another Country
If Beale Street Could Talk
Sonny's Blues
Going to Meet the Man
Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone
Nobody Knows My Name

Book: Absolute Power

Title: Absolute Power
Author: David Baldacci
Published: 1995
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Politics, Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 550
Summary on Goodreads: A grizzled professional cat burglar gets trapped inside the bedroom closet of one of the world's richest men, only to witness, through a one-way mirror, two Secret Service agents kill the billionaire's trampy young wife as she tries to fight off the drunken sexual advances of the nation's chief executive. Running for his life, but not before he picks up a bloodstained letter opener that puts the president at the scene of the crime, the burglar becomes the target of a clandestine manhunt orchestrated by leading members of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, Jack Graham, once a public defender and now a high-powered corporate attorney, gets drawn into the case because the on-the-lam burglar just happens to be the father of his former financee, a crusading Virginia prosecutor. 

Embroidering the narrative through assorted plot whorls are the hero's broken romance; his conflict over selling out for financial success; the prosecutor's confused love-hate for her burglar father; the relentless investigation by a northern Virginia career cop; the dilemma of government agents trapped in a moral catch-22; the amoral ambitions of a sexy White House Chief of Staff; and the old burglar's determination to bring down the ruthless president. 

Meanwhile, lurking at the novel's center like a venomous spider is the sociopathic president.

Also check out Baldacci's many other books (he's written over fifty), which all tend to fall under political thriller/mystery:

Camel Club series

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell series

Will Robbie series

John Puller series

A. Shaw books

and several other standalones

Trilogy: The Prince of Nothing

Trilogy: The Prince of Nothing
Author: R. Scott Bakker
Order of Books: The Darkness That Comes Before
The Warrior Prophet
The Thousandfold Thought
Category: Adult
Started: 2003
Genre: Fantasy
Summary of the first book on Goodreads: Strikingly original in its conception, ambitious in scope, with characters engrossingly and vividly drawn, the first book in R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series creates a remarkable world from whole cloth-its language and classes of people, its cities, religions, mysteries, taboos, and rituals-the kind of all-embracing universe Tolkien and Herbert created unforgettably in the epic fantasies The Lord of the Rings and Dune. It's a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, evoking a time both two thousand years past and two thousand years into the future, as untold thousands gather for a crusade. Among them, two men and two women are ensnared by a mysterious traveler, Anasûrimbor Kellhus-part warrior, part philosopher, part sorcerous, charismatic presence-from lands long thought dead. The Darkness That Comes Before is a history of this great holy war, and like all histories, the survivors write its conclusion. 

Book: The Mezzanine

Title: The Mezzanine
Author: Nicholson Baker
Published: 1988
Category: Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 135
Summary on Goodreads: In his startling, witty, and inexhaustibly inventive first novel—first published in 1986 and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback—the author of Vox and The Fermata uses a one-story escalator ride as the occasion for a dazzling reappraisal of everyday objects and rituals. From the humble milk carton to the act of tying one’s shoes, The Mezzanine at once defamiliarizes the familiar world and endows it with loopy and euphoric poetry. Nicholson Baker’s accounts of the ordinary become extraordinary through his sharp storytelling and his unconventional, conversational style. At first glance, The Mezzanine appears to be a book about nothing. In reality, it is a brilliant celebration of things, simultaneously demonstrating the value of reflection and the importance of everyday human human experiences.

Book: Longbourn

Title: Longbourn
Author: Jo Baker
Published: 2013
Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Retelling, Classic Retelling
Pages: 332
Summary on Goodreads: In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. 

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own. 

Series:The Wide Awake Princess

Series: Wide-Awake Princess
Author: E. D. Baker
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Started: 2010
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy-Tale Retellings/mash-ups, princesses
Summary of First Book: Princess Annie is the younger sister to Gwen, the princess destined to be Sleeping Beauty. When Gwennie pricks her finger and the whole castle falls asleep, only Annie is awake, and only Annie—blessed (or cursed?) with being impervious to magic—can venture out beyond the rose-covered hedge for help. She must find Gwen's true love to kiss her awake.

But who is her true love? The irritating Digby? The happy-go-lucky Prince Andreas, who is holding a contest to find his bride? The conniving Clarence, whose sinister motives couldn't possibly spell true love? Joined by one of her father's guards, Liam, who happened to be out of the castle when the sleeping spell struck, Annie travels through a fairy tale land populated with characters both familiar and new as she tries to fix her sister and her family . . . and perhaps even find a true love of her own.

Note: Also check out the author's Tale of the Frog Princess series which was the inspiration for Disney's The Princess and the Frog

Book: National Velvet

Title: National Velvet
Author: Enid Bagnold
Published: 1935
Category: Classic, Childrens/Middle-Grade
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Horses
Pages: 272
Summary on Goodreads: The timeless story of spirited Velvet Brown and her beloved horse has thrilled generations of readers. And now the republication of this classic story in a fresh, up-to-date package will charm confirmed fans while captivating new ones. Fourteen-year-old Velvet is determined to turn her untamed horse into a champion and personally ride him to victory in the world's greatest steeplechase, the Grand National.

Book: The Wind-Up Girl

Title: The Windup Girl
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Published: 2009
Category: Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 480
Summary on Goodreads: Anderson Lake is AgriGen’s Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand while combing Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories.

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in this chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits and forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.

Series: Ship Breaker

Series: Ship Breaker
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Started: 2010
Category: YA
Genre: Dystopian
Order of Books: Ship Breaker
The Drowned Cities
Summary of First Book: In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life...

Book: Tuck Everlasting

Title: Tuck Everlasting
Author: Natalie Babbitt
Category: Childrens/Middle-Grade
Published: 1974
Genre: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism
Pages: 139
Summary on Goodreads: Doomed to—or blessed with—eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.

Book: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Title: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Author: Avi
Category: YA
Genre: Historical Fiction
Published: 1990
Pages: 304
Summary on Goodreads: An ocean voyage of unimaginable consequences... Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty. But I was just such a girl, and my story is worth relating even if it did happen years ago. Be warned, however: If strong ideas and action offend you, read no more. Find another companion to share your idle hours. For my part I intend to tell the truth as I lived it.

Notes: This author has written dozens of other books, including two other award winners. This is my personal favorite.

Book: Split

Title: Split
Author: Swati Avasthi
Published: 2010
Category: YA
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 280
Summary on Goodreads: Sixteen-Year-Old Jace Witherspoon arrives at the doorstep of his estranged brother Christian with a re-landscaped face (courtesy of his father’s fist), $3.84, and a secret.

He tries to move on, going for new friends, a new school, and a new job, but all his changes can’t make him forget what he left behind—his mother, who is still trapped with his dad, and his ex-girlfriend, who is keeping his secret.

At least so far.

Worst of all, Jace realizes that if he really wants to move forward, he may first have to do what scares him most: He may have to go back. Award-winning novelist Swati Avasthi has created a riveting and remarkably nuanced portrait of what happens after. After you’ve said enough, after you’ve run, after you’ve made the split—how do you begin to live again? Readers won’t be able to put this intense page-turner down.

Trilogy: New York

Trilogy: New York Trilogy
Author: Paul Auster
Started: 1985
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Summary on Goodreads: Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room; haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.

Note: the book pictured here is a bind-up of the original trilogy.

Author: Jane Austen

Author: Jane Austen
Wrote during: the 1800s
Category: Classic
Genre: Romance
Books: Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Northhanger Abbey
Persuasion
Lady Susan

Note: There are several versions of these books available. You can buy them individually or in a bound volume like the one pictured.

Series: Earth's Children

Series: Earth's Children
Author: Jean M. Auel
Started: 1980
Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance
Order of Books: The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
The Shelters of Stone
The Land of Painted Caves
Summary of first book on Goodreads: This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. 

A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by a woman of the Clan, people very different from her own kind. To them, blond, blue-eyed Ayla looks peculiar and ugly--she is one of the Others, those who have moved into their ancient homeland; but Iza cannot leave the girl to die and takes her with them. Iza and Creb, the old Mog-ur, grow to love her, and as Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza’s way of healing, most come to accept her. But the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader sees her differences as a threat to his authority. He develops a deep and abiding hatred for the strange girl of the Others who lives in their midst, and is determined to get his revenge.

Book: Ashes of Roses

Title: Ashes of Roses

Author: Mary Jane Auch

Published: 2002

Category: Young Adult

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 250

Summary on Goodreads: Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died.

Sixteen-year-old Rose Nolan and her family are grateful to have finally reached America, the great land of opportunity. Their happiness is shattered when part of their family is forced to return to Ireland. Rose wants to succeed and stays in New York with her younger sister Maureen. The sisters struggle to survive and barely do so by working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Then, just as Rose is forming friendships and settling in, a devastating fire forces her, Maureen, and their friends to fight for their lives. Surrounded by pain, tragedy, and ashes, Rose wonders if there’s anything left for her in this great land of America.

Book: The Blind Assassin

Title: The Blind Assassin
Author: Margaret Atwood
Published: 2000
Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Science Fiction
Pages: 521
Summary on Goodreads: The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact. 

Note: Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2000 and many other awards

Book: The Handmaid's Tale

Title: The Handmaid's Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Published: 1985
Category: Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 311
Summary on Goodreads: Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now... 

Series: Den of Shadows Quartet

Series: The Den of Shadows
Author: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Published: 2009
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Witches
Summary on Goodreads: Presents the adventures of teenagers Risika, Jessica Allodola, Turquoise Draka, and Sarah Vida as they learn about the mysterious world of vampires and the witches who hunt them...

Note: This is a bind-up of  the series that was originally started in 2000

Book: Life After Life

Title: Life After Life
Author: Kate Atkinson
Published: 2013
Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Time Travel
Pages: 544
Summary on Goodreads: On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born, the third child of a wealthy English banker and his wife. Sadly, she dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. 

For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in any number of ways. Clearly history (and Kate Atkinson) have plans for her: In Ursula rests nothing less than the fate of civilization.

Won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2013 and a dozen other awards

Note: the author recently released a companion book to this called A God in Ruins.

Series: Jackson Brodie

Series: Jackson Brodie
Author: Kate Atkinson
Started: 2004
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Order of Books: Case Histories
One Good Turn
When Will There Be Good News?
Started Early, Took My Dog
Summary of First Book: Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. 

Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.

Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . . 

Series is good for: mystery fans, Cormoron Strike series fans, thriller/suspense fans

Series: Foundation

Trilogy: Foundation
Author: Isaac Asimov
Started: 1951
Category: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Order of Books: Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth
Prelude to Foundation (prequel)
Forward the Foundation (prequel 2)
Summary of first book: For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire -- both scientists and scholars -- and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun -- or fight them and be destroyed. 

Note: Asimov's Robot series is also apart of this universe. 

Trilogy: Everneath

Trilogy: Everneath
Author: Brodi Ashton
Started: 2012
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Mythology Referencing
Order of Books: Everneath
Neverfall (ebook novella)
Everbound
Evertrue
Summary of first book: Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these precious months forgetting the Everneath and trying to reconnect with her boyfriend, Jack, the person most devastated by her disappearance—and the one person she loves more than anything. But there’s just one problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who enticed her to the Everneath in the first place, has followed Nikki home. Cole wants to take over the throne in the underworld and is convinced Nikki is the key to making it happen. And he’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back, this time as his queen.

As Nikki’s time on the Surface draws to a close and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she is forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole’s queen.

Good for: Urban fantasy fans, paranormal romance fans

Book: Thirteen Reasons Why

Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
Published: 2007
Category: YA
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Personal/Family Drama
Pages: 304
Summary on Goodreads: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers thirteen cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush who committed suicide two weeks earlier.
On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list.

Book is Good for: Speak fans, serious issue book fans, realistic fiction fans

Book: Zombie Queen at Newbury High

Title: Zombie Queen of Newbury High
Author: Amanda Ashby
Published: 2009
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Zombies
Pages: 200
Summary on Goodreads: Quiet, unpopular, non-cheerleading Mia is blissfully happy. She is dating super hot football god Rob, and he actually likes her and asked her to prom! Enter Samantha?cheerleading goddess and miss popularity? who starts making a move for Rob. With prom in a few days, Mia needs to act fast. So she turns to her best friend, Candice, and decides to do a love spell on Rob. Unfortunately, she ends up inflicting a zombie virus onto her whole class, making herself their leader! At first she is flattered that everyone is treating her like a queen. But then zombie hunter hottie Chase explains they are actually fattening her up, because in a few days, Mia will be the first course in their new diet. She?s sure she and Chase can figure something out, but she suggests that no one wear white to prom, because things could get very messy.

Other books author has written: Fairy Bad Day
You Had Me At Halo
Demonosity
Sophie's Mixed Up Magic series

Book: The Wrap-Up List

Title: The Wrap-Up List
Author: Steven Arntson
Published: 2013
Category: YA
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Magical Realism, Romance
Pages: 240
Summary on Goodreads: In this modern-day suburban town, one percent of all fatalities come about in the most peculiar way. Deaths—eight-foot-tall, silver-gray creatures—send a letter (“Dear So-and-So, your days are numbered”) to whomever is chosen for a departure, telling them to wrap up their lives and do the things they always wanted to do before they have to “depart.” When sixteen-year-old Gabriela receives her notice, she is, of course devastated. Will she kiss her crush Sylvester before it’s too late?

Series: Arkwell Academy

Series: Arkwell Academy
Author: Mindee Arnett
Started: 2013
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Order of Books: The Nightmare Affair
The Nightmare Affair
The Nightmare Charade (out August 4rth)
fourth book apparently coming
Summary of the first book: Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she’s a criminal. No, she’s a Nightmare.

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother’s infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker’s house, things get a whole lot more complicated. He’s hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn’t get much more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli’s dream comes true.

Now Dusty has to follow the clues—both within Eli’s dreams and out of them—to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she’s up to and marks her as the next target.

Good for: Harry Potter fans, Percy Jackson fans, Mythos Academy fans

Series: Avalon

Series: Avalon
Author: Mindee Arnett
Started: 2014
Category: YA
Genre: Science Fiction
Order of Books: Avalon
Polaris
Summary of First Book: Of the various star systems that make up the Confederation, most lie thousands of light-years from First Earth-and out here, no one is free. The agencies that govern the Confederation are as corrupt as the crime bosses who patrol it, and power is held by anyone with enough greed and ruthlessness to claim it. That power is derived from one thing: metatech, the devices that allow people to travel great distances faster than the speed of light.

Jeth Seagrave and his crew of teenage mercenaries have survived in this world by stealing unsecured metatech, and they're damn good at it. Jeth doesn't care about the politics or the law; all he cares about is earning enough money to buy back his parents' ship, Avalon, from his crime-boss employer and getting himself and his sister, Lizzie, the heck out of Dodge. But when Jeth finds himself in possession of information that both the crime bosses and the government are willing to kill for, he is going to have to ask himself how far he'll go to get the freedom he's wanted for so long.

Good for: Firefly fans, science fiction adventure fans

Trilogy: Darkness Rising

Trilogy: Darkness Rising
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Started: 2011
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Order of Books: The Gathering
The Calling
The Rising
Summary on Goodreads: Sixteen-year-old Maya is just an ordinary teen in an ordinary town. Sure, she doesn't know much about her background - the only thing she really has to cling to is an odd paw-print birthmark on her hip - but she never really put much thought into who her parents were or how she ended up with her adopted parents in this tiny medical-research community on Vancouver Island.

Until now.

Strange things have been happening in this claustrophobic town - from the mountain lions that have been approaching Maya to her best friend's hidden talent for "feeling" out people and situations, to the sexy new bad boy who makes Maya feel...different. Combine that with a few unexplained deaths and a mystery involving Maya's biological parents and it's easy to suspect that this town might have more than its share of skeletons in its closet.

Trilogy: Darkest Powers

Trilogy: Darkest Powers
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Started: 2008
Category: YA
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Order of Books: The Summoning
The Awakening
The Reckoning
Summary of the first book: My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.

All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don't even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost - and the ghost saw me.

Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won't leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a "special home" for troubled teens. Yet the home isn't what it seems. Don't tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It's up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House... before its skeletons come back to haunt me.

Series: Women of the Otherworld

Series: Women of the Otherwold
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Started: 2001
Category: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
First Book: Bitten
Summary of The First Book: Elena Michaels is the world’s only female werewolf. And she’s tired of it. Tired of a life spent hiding and protecting, a life where her most important job is hunting down rogue werewolves. Tired of a world that not only accepts the worst in her–her temper, her violence–but requires it. Worst of all, she realizes she’s growing content with that life, with being that person.

So she left the Pack and returned to Toronto where she’s trying to live as a human. When the Pack leader calls asking for her help fighting a sudden uprising, she only agrees because she owes him. Once this is over, she’ll be squared with the Pack and free to live life as a human. Which is what she wants. Really.

Series: Lux

Series: Lux
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Order of Books: Obsidian
Onyx
Opal
Origin
Opposition
Started: 2004
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Romance
Category: YA
Summary of first book on Goodreads: Starting over sucks.

When we moved to West Virginia right before my senior year, I’d pretty much resigned myself to thick accents, dodgy internet access, and a whole lot of boring… until I spotted my hot neighbor, with his looming height and eerie green eyes. Things were looking up.

And then he opened his mouth.

Daemon is infuriating. Arrogant. Stab-worthy. We do not get along. At all. But when a stranger attacks me and Daemon literally freezes time with a wave of his hand, well, something… unexpected happens.

The hot alien living next door marks me.

You heard me. Alien. Turns out Daemon and his sister have a galaxy of enemies wanting to steal their abilities, and Daemon’s touch has me lit up like the Vegas Strip. The only way I’m getting out of this alive is by sticking close to Daemon until my alien mojo fades.

If I don’t kill him first, that is. 

Note: Author has written several other series/trilogies, but this is one her most well known

Trilogy: Kane and Abel

Trilogy: Kane aand Abel
Author: Jeffrey Archer
Category: Adult
Started: 1970s
Order of Books: Kane and Abel
The Prodigal Daughter
Shall We Tell the President?
Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Family Sagas
Summary of the First Book: Born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world, both men are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. These two men -- ambitious, powerful, ruthless -- are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fuelled by their all-consuming hatred. Over 60 years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the success and triumph that only one man can have. 

Book: The One and Only Ivan

Title: The One and Only Ivan
Author: Katherine Applegate
Category: Childrens/Middle Grade
Published: 2011
Genre: Fantasy/Animal characters
Pages: 307
Summary on Goodreads: Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all.

Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he’s seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home—and his own art—through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it’s up to Ivan to make it a change for the better.

Notes: Won the Newberry Medal in 2013 and several other dozen awards

Series: Everworld

Series: Everworld
Author: Katherine Applegate
Started: 1999
Category: YA
Genre: Fantasy
Order of Books: Search for Senna
Land of Loss
Enter the Enchanted
Realm of the Reaper
Discover the Destroyer
Fear the Fantastic
Gateway to the Gods
Brave the Betrayal
Inside the Illusion
Understand the Unknown
Mystify the Magician
Entertain the End

Series: Animorphs

Series: Animorphs
Author: Katherine Applegate
Started: 1996
Category: Middle-Grade
Genre: Science-Fiction
Number of books: 54 plus 4 companion books
Summary of the first book on Goodreads: Sometimes weird things happen to people. Ask Jake. He may tell you about the night he and his friends saw the strange light in the sky. He may even tell you about what happened when they realized the "light" was only a plan -- from another planet. Here's where Jake's story gets a little weird. It's where they're told that the human race is under attack -- and given the chance to fight back.

Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco have the power to morph into any animal they choose. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil that is greater than anything the world has ever seen...

Book: The White Tiger

Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
Published: 2008
Category: Adult Fiction
Genre:Realistic Fiction
Pages: 320
Summary on Goodreads: The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. 

Note: Man Booker Prize winner of 2008