Young Adult literature is experiencing a new golden age. Just consider the impact on popular culture, including movies spawned, of the Harry Potter series, the Twilight novels, the Hunger Games books, and Markus Zusak's award-winning The Book Thief. As YA and children's fiction crosses over to generate adult fans and purchasers, watch for adult fiction writers to follow and adapt/adopt these popular YA trends, as identified by Millhouse Press: dystopian tales (The Hunger Games); special needs protagonists (My Brother Charlie is an example); paranormal romance with vampires and more (such as Beautiful Creatures, a 2013 movie, too); mythology-based fantasy (see the Goddess Girls series); return of the venerable diary/journal format (such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid); and multimedia (exemplified by the Skeleton Creek series). But what's coming next? Writers want to strike gold with the next hot trend, not mine an exhausted vein. A recent story by Husna Haq in The Christian Science Monitor suggests that vampire-zombie-werewolf romance, Potteresque magical fantasy and dystopian adventure all may be running out of steam at last, and cites these hot new YA content predictions courtesy of Bookish.com editors: novels about a "loveless future," where teens struggle against societies seeking to eradicate love; modernized fairy tales, perhaps with a cyborg Cinderella or an unusual viewpoint, such as the not-so-wicked witch or stepmother (Disney seems to be tapping into that with its Maleficent film); a rise in male protagonists to end the long reign of girl power a la Katniss Everdeen; and a melding of YA with cyberpunk virtual reality and AI villainy (James Dashner's The Eye of Minds is an example). Some of the 2014 YA debuts certainly fit those new categories. For a list of the best YA of 2014, see the Young Adult Library Services Association's picks at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/2014-best-fiction-young-adults
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