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"PARANORMAL" VS. "SUPERNATURAL"
Because YA is a classification of books geared toward younger readers, it can span many genres, or even combine them. This can make defining certain types of YA very tricky. What qualifies as "supernatural" versus "paranormal" is a great example, as the terms are often used interchangeably.
For the purposes of my bookshop, I have adopted a more narrow definition of these terms:
Paranormal: related to phenomena beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding, including extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, reincarnation, ghosts, hauntings, astral projection, poltergeists activity, etc. Titles related to these topics can be found on this page.
Supernatural: Relating to manifestations, entities or events that do not exist in nature or are pulled from legend or myth. This may including witchcraft, magic, mythical beings, monsters or demons such as werewolves and vampires. For titles dealing with these and related topics, please see my Supernatural booklist.
Additional titles that deal with paranormal and supernatural phenomena can be found on my Fantasy booklist.
Because YA is a classification of books geared toward younger readers, it can span many genres, or even combine them. This can make defining certain types of YA very tricky. What qualifies as "supernatural" versus "paranormal" is a great example, as the terms are often used interchangeably.
For the purposes of my bookshop, I have adopted a more narrow definition of these terms:
Paranormal: related to phenomena beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding, including extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, reincarnation, ghosts, hauntings, astral projection, poltergeists activity, etc. Titles related to these topics can be found on this page.
Supernatural: Relating to manifestations, entities or events that do not exist in nature or are pulled from legend or myth. This may including witchcraft, magic, mythical beings, monsters or demons such as werewolves and vampires. For titles dealing with these and related topics, please see my Supernatural booklist.
Additional titles that deal with paranormal and supernatural phenomena can be found on my Fantasy booklist.
Constantine: Distorted Illusions by Kami Garcia and Isaac Goodhart
Ghost Roast by Shawneé Gibbs
Over My Dead Body: A Witchy Graphic Novel by Sweeney Boo
Five Nights at Freddy's Graphic Novel Trilogy Box Set by Scott Cawthon
All the Lovely Bad Ones Graphic Novel: A Ghost Story by Scott Peterson
Dead Mall by Adam Cesare
Frontera by Julio Anta
The Agony House by Cherie Priest
The Last Dreamwalker by Rita Woods
When by Victoria Laurie
His Life Abiding by Marsh Myers
The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
Wait Till Helen Comes Graphic Novel: A Ghost Story
by Scott Peterson
The Hundredth Voice by Caitlin Like
The Agony House by Cherie Priest
THE REAL MURDER STORY BEHIND MY REINCARNATION NOVEL:
My first YA novel, His Life Abiding, was published in 2013. On its ten year anniversary, I took a look back at the real murder case of a German POW during World War II that inspired the mystery central to the book's plot.
If you’ve read this paranormal mystery, you know the plot revolves around the capture, imprisonment and subsequent murder of a German POW named Ehren Tschantz during World War II. In the author’s note at the end of the book, I wrote that Tschantz’s story was based on the U.S. military’s practice of using captured Germans with anti-Nazi feelings as “stool pigeons” to extract information from other prisoners. What I didn’t reveal was my family's weird connection to the actual murder case that inspired His Life Abiding.
To explain this, I need to go back to 1998 when The History Channel premiered a documentary entitled America’s Last Mass Execution. Based on the book Martial Justice: America’s Last Mass Execution by Richard Whittingham, the film chronicled in part the capture and murder of a German prisoner of war named Werner Drechsler.
And this is where everything started... MORE.
My first YA novel, His Life Abiding, was published in 2013. On its ten year anniversary, I took a look back at the real murder case of a German POW during World War II that inspired the mystery central to the book's plot.
If you’ve read this paranormal mystery, you know the plot revolves around the capture, imprisonment and subsequent murder of a German POW named Ehren Tschantz during World War II. In the author’s note at the end of the book, I wrote that Tschantz’s story was based on the U.S. military’s practice of using captured Germans with anti-Nazi feelings as “stool pigeons” to extract information from other prisoners. What I didn’t reveal was my family's weird connection to the actual murder case that inspired His Life Abiding.
To explain this, I need to go back to 1998 when The History Channel premiered a documentary entitled America’s Last Mass Execution. Based on the book Martial Justice: America’s Last Mass Execution by Richard Whittingham, the film chronicled in part the capture and murder of a German prisoner of war named Werner Drechsler.
And this is where everything started... MORE.
Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Open MIC Night at Westminster Cemetery by Mary Amato
Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
Stranger with My Face by Lois Duncan
The Ghosts of Rose Hill by R. M. Romero
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Voice Upstairs by Laura E. Weymouth
Castaways of the Flying Dutchman by Brian Jacques
Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK
By Neil Gaiman (author), Dave McKean (illustrator)
MY REVIEW: If a story about an orphaned boy, the soul survivor of a mass murder, being raised by the residents of a haunted graveyard sounds ghoulish, well, it is. But would you also believe it's charming?
Appropriately called The Graveyard Book, this 2008 novel is by English author Neil Gaiman who's best known for his macabre masterpiece, Coraline (2002). The Graveyard Book was his first full length novel after Coraline and it shares some of the same grim themes.
The story begins on the night of the murder when the young protagonist manages to free himself from his crib and wander out into the night just as a shadowy killer called "the man Jack" is doing in his mother, father and older sister. The tot ends up at the gates of the cemetery at the top of the hill, where the ghostly residents gather to debate his fate. In many ways, the cemetery is the book's central character. Lavishly detailed by Gaiman, the reader comes to know every nook and cranny of the place, and appreciate it not just as a domicile for spooks, but as a refuge for the living. Bestowed with "the freedom of the graveyard," Bod is able to move about its confines safely, interacting with both the dead and the various types of wildlife which inhabit its wooded hills.
But it's never quite the same as having living, breathing people around. So Bod is particularly excited when he befriends a girl named Scarlett who lives in the nearby village and comes to the graveyard to play. Bod's friendship with Scarlett makes him long even more to explore the outside world. But Silas is quick to remind him "the man Jack" who killed his parents is still at large and still hunting him. The Graveyard Book is a compelling, often touching novel with themes and characters young adults will gobble up. Gaiman is particularly adept at constructing compelling dialogue and historical dialects. In fact, if I can bestow a high compliment, he's the best I've found at this since I read Robert Louis Stevenson as a teenager.
By Neil Gaiman (author), Dave McKean (illustrator)
MY REVIEW: If a story about an orphaned boy, the soul survivor of a mass murder, being raised by the residents of a haunted graveyard sounds ghoulish, well, it is. But would you also believe it's charming?
Appropriately called The Graveyard Book, this 2008 novel is by English author Neil Gaiman who's best known for his macabre masterpiece, Coraline (2002). The Graveyard Book was his first full length novel after Coraline and it shares some of the same grim themes.
The story begins on the night of the murder when the young protagonist manages to free himself from his crib and wander out into the night just as a shadowy killer called "the man Jack" is doing in his mother, father and older sister. The tot ends up at the gates of the cemetery at the top of the hill, where the ghostly residents gather to debate his fate. In many ways, the cemetery is the book's central character. Lavishly detailed by Gaiman, the reader comes to know every nook and cranny of the place, and appreciate it not just as a domicile for spooks, but as a refuge for the living. Bestowed with "the freedom of the graveyard," Bod is able to move about its confines safely, interacting with both the dead and the various types of wildlife which inhabit its wooded hills.
But it's never quite the same as having living, breathing people around. So Bod is particularly excited when he befriends a girl named Scarlett who lives in the nearby village and comes to the graveyard to play. Bod's friendship with Scarlett makes him long even more to explore the outside world. But Silas is quick to remind him "the man Jack" who killed his parents is still at large and still hunting him. The Graveyard Book is a compelling, often touching novel with themes and characters young adults will gobble up. Gaiman is particularly adept at constructing compelling dialogue and historical dialects. In fact, if I can bestow a high compliment, he's the best I've found at this since I read Robert Louis Stevenson as a teenager.
Loving, Ohio by Matthew Erman
Little Moons by Jen Storm
The Hills of Estrella Roja by Ashley Robin Franklin
The Turn of the Screw and Other Horrors: The Best Ghost Stories of Henry James: Annotated and Illustrated by Henry James
Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters
It Found Us by Lindsay Currie
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories by Roald Dahl
When Ghosts Call Us Home by Katya de Becerra