Kristen Chandler’s novel is not about werewolves or anything else supernatural. In some ways, it’s not even about wolves. It’s about small towns, growing up and boys and girls.

Imagine living in a Resident Evil world where even the dogs are zombies and everything you know about defending yourself you learned from George Romero films. Then imagine that you’re a blogger, you live and breathe the news and you’ve only got one goal – finding (and telling) the truth.

Tired of vampires, werewolves and zombies? Looking for something different, something a bit more realistic? Look no further! Francisco X. Stork’s two brilliant novels might be just what you’re looking for.

Primarily known for her columns, Molly Ivins was not born a columnist, even though she did long to write from a young age . In Bill Minutaglio & W. Michael Smith's engrossing biography, Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, we are allowed to step inside her life. She was born in California, but grew up in Texas, which is when most of the world met her.

If you like history, and even if you don't, you'll want to pick up a copy of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. This witty, clever and engrossing book reads like a novel and not a study of presidential assassinations, but that's exactly what it is.

There are many novels we enjoy because they are fast reads or present mysteries to solve. In those books, we get caught up in the story arc and we can’t wait to see how they turn out. But there are also novels that I as a librarian like to call the quiet reads, the ones that have passages to savor and ideas to wrestle with long after you finish the last page. They are the ones that some of our patrons tell me are reads that “stay with you.”

At first glance, Nancy Farmer's novel, The House of the Scorpion, is a coming of age story set in a traditional science fiction universe. And while it is very much a coming of age story, Farmer's book is more than that. It's a rather surprisingly profound look at what it means to be human.

The following family sagas track generations over many years, offering us casts of characters we care out, complicated relationships among the clans and atmospheric settings. They also set in a variety of countries and feature a range of time periods.

Check out these novels featuring family stories. 

Dystopia: A modern term invented as the opposite of utopia and applied to any alarmingly unpleasant imaginary world, usually of the projected future (Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, pg. 74).

If you're looking for something a little bit darker, a little bit scarier and not quite like our own world, look no further.

Historical fiction is a unique way of looking at our, and other people’s, pasts. Novelists take historical events or people and recreate them with a mix of fact and fiction. While popular with adults, there are numerous historical fiction books for teens and young adults.