Top 7 Young Adult Books for Adults

Neil Gaiman, one of the finest fantasy storytellers of modern times, wrote Stardust to honor the simpler fairy tales and fantasies of times past, where a town was akin to a place magical and a person could wonder without restraint if he or she so choosed. What Gaiman accomplishes with this storytelling endeavor is as imaginative as Tinkerbell’s pixie dust in transporting the reader through a tale of love, danger and adventure.

The Harry Potter books, starting with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, have become a worldwide phenomenon. People of all ages have eagerly anticipated each new installment in this series. Read for yourself about Harry Potter, a young boy whose life is changed when he starts attending Hogwarts, a school for wizards.

There's a reason more than 10 million Twilight series books are in print. Twilight, the first in the series, is the addictive story of two teenagers –- Bella, a regular girl, and Edward, a perfect gentleman and a vampire. This is the type of book you might read in just a few sittings, becoming engrossed in its fantastical world and oblivious to your physical surroundings.

Eragon was written by a 15-year-old boy about a 15-year-old peasant boy who finds a dragon egg and discovers he is descended from dragon-riding warriors. The Inheritance trilogy takes readers through Eragon's adventures.

Lemony Snicket's thirteen books in his A Series of Unfortunate Events tell the story of the three Baudelaire children, who find out in the first book that their parents have died in a fire. These are dark novels, but readers will enjoy Lemony Snicket's linguistic playfulness and wit.

L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books have delighted girls for decades. The first books starts when the 10-year-old orphan Anne is adopted. Sequels take readers through Anne's years in school, at college, as a teacher and as a wife and mother. These are books to read and reread.

James Patterson wrote Maximum Ride in hopes of attracting young adults to reading through fast-paced thrillers. Adult Patterson fans will also enjoy the story of Max, a human-bird mutant, and her mutant friends. These are quick reads that are signature Patterson (with less sex and violence than his adult fiction).