"Harry Potter" and "Twilight" Fans, Try These Books and Authors

Harry Potter and Twilight books fans, are you grieving the end of the series? You can look forward to the movies, but the books are done. Feeling sad? Take comfort in the arms of these great fantasy and juvenile horror authors and books.

I know the feeling. When I was 12, I finished the last of the Little Women books, Jo's Boys. That was Lousia May Alcott's final chapter in the March family. As she said, 'Let the curtain close.' That was it. All these people that I knew better than I knew my own neighbors, gone. Done. Like they had never existed.

It was horrible; like mass genocide. I was depressed for days. Nothing mattered! Oh sure I could reread the books, but never learn anything new about the family. I had fallen in love with two of the characters. I was keeping an eye on three budding romances. It was very painful.

Just like when you lose a pet, everyone suggested that I find a new series to read about. Hah! Fat chance of finding anything half so good, I thought. Nothing would ever replace the March family for me.

But after my denial, anger and blame stage of grief passed, I tried, half-heartedly at first to find other books to take my mind off my sorrow. I haunted used book stores and garage sales. Finally I found some similar stories that proved to be very good. In fact, some might even have been better.

Now I'm not saying that you will find anything better than HP. It is an unusually well -written series. But when you turn that last page and realize that this was it, maybe you'll need like me, a source of consolation for your grief. And maybe you can find comfort in the arms of another story or series.

Here are a few recommendations from a high school teacher, to check out: They are in the fantasy; drama and some horror genre.

Full Tilt =Neal Shusterman

The Vampire Plagues =Sebastian Rook

The Seeing Stone -Kevin Crossley-Holland

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -Douglas Adams

Fahrenhuit 451 & Dark Carnival-Ray Bradbury

Children of the Lamp-P.B.Kerr

The Phantom Tollbooth-Norman Juster

Coraline -Neil Gaiman

any by Lloyd Alexander

The Grey King-Susan Cooper

The Seventh Tower, Lireal, Sabriel, The Keys to the Kingdom series -Garth Nix

A Wrinkle in Time and three sequels Many Waters, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet -Madeleine L'Engle

The Hobbit -J.R.R. Tolkien

The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

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