The Next Twilight

From fallen angels to zombies, publishers and movie producers are on the hunt for the next big young adult series that will dominate the market. The Daily Beast’s Shannon Donnelly on the top six candidates.

The release of New Moon, the second installment in the movie adaptations of the Twilight book series, will no doubt send some readers to seek out the novels behind the phenomenon. But what will they do once they’ve torn through the four books in Stephenie Meyer’s series and find themselves craving more? Here are six young adult series that are likely candidates to replace Twilight as the next blockbuster novels for the ever hungry YA set.

Whether it’s fallen angels or sparkling vampires, New York Public Library’s teen collections specialist Megan Honig tells The Daily Beast, “Every time I go into a library and I ask teens what they like—and this was not true three or four years ago—everybody says paranormal. It doesn’t seem to be going away.”

“Every time I go into a library and I ask teens what they like—and this was not true three or four years ago—everybody says paranormal. It doesn’t seem to be going away.”

1. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. 336 pages. Razorbill. $8.99 Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy is the obvious heir to the Twilight throne. Twilight critics who found heroine Bella’s personality to be on the weak side will find their antidote in Rose, the feisty, snarky, headstrong lead in this six-book series. As a Dhampir, a half-mortal/half-vampire warrior, Rose is sworn to protect the Moroi—mortal vampires who walk in the sun, feed without killing, and grow old and die—from the Strigoi, vampires of the traditional immortal-killing-machine variety. When Twilight was starting to heat up a few years ago, Razorbill editor Jessica Rothenberg went on the hunt for a new series with bite. “We went ahead and we read everything out there, and we felt like this was the best-written vampire series that we’d seen. We just felt like it was the perfect thing to be the next big thing, when Twilight was done. We wanted this to be the series teens are reaching for,” Rothenberg says. Sure enough, there are plenty of elements that make this series methadone for those in Twilight withdrawal, from Rose’s forbidden (and steamy!) romance with her mentor Dimitri to epic brawls with the baddie vamps. Readers are responding to the series with gusto—Vampire Academy has spent 15 weeks so far on The New York Times children’s series list, recently hitting as high as No. 2, just under Twilight. The fifth book in the series, Spirit Bound, is due out in May 2010, and the sixth and final book is slated for fall 2010. A six-book spinoff series will start in fall 2011.

2. Fallen by Lauren Kate

Fallen by Lauren Kate. 464 pgs. Delacorte. $12.14. Bloodsuckers are about to have some competition for the hearts of YA readers—and no, werewolves, this doesn’t mean your time has finally come. “Vampires are almost out, and fallen angels are in,” says Honig. Accordingly, Delacorte Press is rolling out its new commercial for Lauren Kate’s Fallen before select showings of New Moon. Call it the first shot in a supernatural war. Fallen, due out Dec. 8, follows a young girl, Luce (rhymes with “loose”), who falls for her reform-school classmate, the handsome and brooding Daniel Grigori. To reveal that Daniel is a fallen angel is hardly a spoiler, of course; if the book’s title didn’t tip you off, then the liberal references to hell, angels, and Paradise Lost would. While the unhurried pacing drags the first two-thirds of the book down slightly, it ends with enough action, intrigue, and, yes, romance to guarantee readers will come back for the next installment, Torment, due in October 2010, with two more books to follow. As if this isn’t enough to get vampires running scared, Simon & Schuster unleashed the first book in its own fallen angel trilogy, Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, in October.

3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 384 pgs. Scholastic Press. $10.79 Not every YA series needs a supernatural bent to be a best seller. The first two books in the all-human Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins, have been dominating The New York Times children’s chapter books list for 61 and 10 weeks, respectively. The Hunger Games, and its sequel, Catching Fire, imagines a dystopic future where, after a failed rebellion against the fascist Capitol by the 12 districts of the fictional country Panem, the government requires each district to send two children to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised event where the 24 tributes fight to the death. Collins knows how to write detailed and engaging characters, from the sharp and strong-willed Hunger Games participant Katniss Everdeen to the coterie of tributes and handlers who make up Katniss’ world.

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• More stories, galleries, clips of New MoonAs far as how appropriate it is to have kids killing other kids in a YA novel, David Levithan, an editorial director at Scholastic and accomplished YA author himself (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Love Is the Higher Law), isn’t concerned that younger readers will misunderstand the novel’s ultimately peaceful message. “The ramifications of the violence are all explored, the violence is never gratuitous, never exploitative. It’s a very anti-violence book. [Collins is] using the violence to comment on it, not glory it,” he says. Lionsgate has already snapped up the movie rights to the series, and Collins is hard at work adapting the first book into a screenplay. In the meantime, the final book in the trilogy will be released in 2010.