The Next Twilight Is Already Here: Our Picks For the Next Craze

Have you heard of the Delirium series? What about Blood Red Road?

By Leslie Gornstein Oct 28, 2012 2:02 PMTags
City of Bones, Divergent, HiddenMargaret K McElderry Books, HarperTeen, St. Martin's Griffin

The coming of the final Twilight film makes me wonder: Will there ever be a book phenomenon like that again?
—Gunther, via Twitter

Aside from the holy-crap! fest that is Fifty Shades of Grey, there are a few books that are bubbling up in the zeitgeist. Whether they break as big as Bella is yet to be seen, but I'm happy to clue you in in the meantime.

If you're a young-adult fiction fan, you've probably already heard of many of these. If not, and if you loved the doormat-on-vampire fantasy that was the Twilight series, you just might want to check these out.

Caster Chronicles: This is the one series that has the most potential for popularity, especially once the film version of the first book, Beautiful Creatures, debuts in February. The big twist: The new supernatural stranger in town isn't a boy vampire, but a teenage girl who comes from a long line of magic casters. A local boy falls for her, and the rest is all mystery and melodrama.

House of Night series: This one's been around since 2007, but with every new book, the popularity of its main character, a vampire named Zoey Redbird, only seems to grow. The series devolves into ridiculousness by the second book—red vampires versus blue vampires? Really?—but it's literary candy.

Delirium series: Imagine a world where love has been categorized as a disease, and then imagine that a girl named Lena falls in love anyway. Author Lauren Oliver sure has, and Delirium, the first book in the series, became a bestseller. The second installment of the series was released earlier this year. And, natch, Fox 2000 has bought the film rights.

Blood Red Road: Rebel Heart, the sequel to this breakthrough book, is coming out on Tuesday, and you can bet fans will be ready to snap it up. The heroine? Saba, a scavenger in a post-apocalyptic-style wasteland beset by sandstorms. When Saba's brother Lugh is kidnapped by cloaked horsemen, the adventure begins.

Mortal Instruments series: Like the House of Night series, this one's been around since 2007. But it's a machine that keeps on running, with a fourth installment that came out earlier this year and a fifth due in 2014. We're talking an urban fantasy with a kitchen sink full of fantasy characters, including demons, werewolves and, of course, vampires. A film is being made with Lily Collins in the lead role.

There are more, of course; if you're interested you should also look up the Divergent series, and the refreshingly non-supernatural Rock and a Hard Place.