Readers Advisory for LDS books

A few weeks ago, my teenaged neighbor and I were chatting about books. She had seen me reading on my deck and wanted to know what kind of books I liked to read. I told her that mostly I read bestsellers and general fiction, but this summer had been reading murder mysteries (something about the sunshine drives me to read dark books).  I asked her what she likes to read and she said anything good and juicy, and she prefers LDS books and asked for recommendations.  Confession time – the only LDS books that I know of are the Tennis Shoe books, and I wasn't even sure what they were about. I knew that we had LDS books in Chinook Arch so I first recommended that she try a subject search for LDS – fiction (narrowed to YA) in bibliocommons.  But, this is an area that I am seriously lacking in, so I promised to do some research and see what I could find for her. Below are some sources that I found for  Adult and YA LDS books.

Provo Public Library

A Google search led me to the Provo library which has quite a few resources for LDS readers . They keep book lists for both Adult LDS fiction, and YA LDS fiction on their library thing site. These lists seemed comprehensive and were a good place for me to start. Their blog also has quite a few recommendations for LDS readers.

Whitney Awards

The Whitneys are an award program for novels written by LDS authors. The prizes are awarded for Best Novel of the Year, Best Novel by a New Author, Best General Fiction, Best Historical, Best Romance, Best Mystery/Suspense, Best Youth Fiction- General, Best Youth Fiction – Speculative. The have the finalists and winners listed back to 2007 on their website.

LDS Publishers

The LDS Publisher website boasts “books for LDS readers. Tips for LDS writers”.  This site could be good resource for aspiring LDS writers in your community. It’s also full of LDS book reviews.

Deseret Books

Deseret is largest LDS book publisher and seller. Check out the new releases to see what’s up and coming from them. Or sort by Teen + Fiction and sort by popularity to find popular YA LDS books.

Did you find these links useful? Do you have other resources that I didn't touch on? Please share in the comments!