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Adult and young adult trends
Adult
Romance is alive and well, and so is the genre called paranormal romance. Paranormal romance is romance intermixed with fantasy, horror, or science fiction. The heroine is often human, and has a thrilling and possibly dangerous romantic relationship with a vampire, werewolf, immortal, shape-shifter, or ghost. Some of the more prominent authors in this genre include Sherrilyn Kenyon Larissa Ione, Alexandra Ivy, Kresly Cole, Gena Showalter. Check out the Paranormal Romance Community at Amazon for an up to date list of authors and their sub-genres.
Urban fiction is flying off the shelf at PCL libraries. It's all about the inner city; pimps and drug dealers are major characters. The protagonist, male or female, will typically have conflicts with the criminal lifestyle, and this and a romance element will drive the plot. Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines wrote in this genre in the 1970s, but it really took off in the late 90s, with the success of Sister Souljah, Omar Tyree, and Teri Woods.
More recently, look for authors Nikki Turner, Vickie Stringer, K'wan, and Keisha Ervin. Word of mouth was responsible for this genre catching on, and individual authors often published and promoted their work. Now Simon & Schuster publishes street lit under their Strebor imprint, so the audience for the street lit is definitely substantial and growing. The following links will connect you to authors and reviews:
African-American literature Book Club
Young Adult
Horror written for the teen audience isn't new - but mainstays like Diane Hoh, PC Cast and LJ Smith were generally published as mass-market paperbacks. However, it's hard to live in mainstream America and remain unaware of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, and her success has led to the reissue of PC Cast's House Of Night series, and LJ Smith's Nightworld series. These are both a blend of horror and romance: paranormal romance for teens. As with adult paranormal romance, there are sub-genres involving werewolves, faeries, and/or time travel. Holly Black or Maggie Stiefvater write about faeries.
When Harlequin bought out BET Books, they began publishing young adult novels with multi-cultural, contemporary characters under the Kimani Tru imprint. Authors Earl Sewell and Celeste O. Norfleet, who previously wrote adult fiction published under the BET imprint, are publishing teen fiction under Kimani Tru with dialogue that sounds right to urban teens, but is age appropriate in subject. More and more authors of adult fiction are also writing young adult fiction. Joyce Carol Oates was before it became the norm; also look for young adult novels by Nick Hornby, Robert Parker, Jacquelin Thomas, and Sherman Alexie.
There's a major trend towards re-telling of recent novels in manga or graphic novel form, but it's not limited to the teen audience, even though manga is primarily geared to middle scool and high school kids. Patterson's young adult Maximum Ride series is being re-issued and rewritten as manga; Meg Cabot, Stephenie Meyer, and Darren
Shan's young adult series are also getting that treatment. But adult authors like Sherrilyn Kenyon are beginning to moving into the format as well, and it's likely their work will be a crossover to the teen audience.
To stay on top of young adult trends, check out Amazon Teens or Barnes and Noble's Teens teen pages.