If You Liked Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Posted - 02/09/2009
I'm going out on a limb here and recommending some books that don't have vampires, but they are involved and romantic!
"Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin
"This is a book about the beauty and complexity of the human soul, about God, love, and justice, and yet you can lose yourself in it as if it were a dream. You will be transported to New York of the Belle Epoque,
to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented winters. One night,
Peter Lake - orphan, master-mechanic, and master second-storey man - attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper
West Side. Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between the middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl who is dying. Because of a love that at first he cannot fully understand, Peter Lake, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven "to stop time and bring back
the dead." His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beset by winter, is a truly beautiful and extraordinary story." -- (summary from Powells.com)
"Little, Big" by John Crowley
Edgewood is many houses, all put inside each other, or perhaps across each other. It's filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment:
the further in you go, the bigger it gets. Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Alice Drinkwater, comes to Edgewood, her family home, where he finds himself drawn into a world of magical strangeness.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.
They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic."
So opens our story, set in the early nineteenth century when magic is no longer practiced, merely studied by theoretical magicians. But then the York society of magicians discovers that there is one last practicing magician in England, the fussy and reclusive Mr. Norrell. The story that unfolds over the next 781 pages incorporates magic, of course, but also romance, mystery, poetry, folklore (real and imagined), history (the Duke of Wellington plays a role), and horror, all written in the style of Jane Austen and with the storytelling skill of Charles Dickens. Don't be put off by the length of this book - it's a pure joy from start to finish. - reviewed by Caroline Parr
"Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon
In Scotland with her husband on a second honeymoon after World War II, Claire enters a circle of stones and is transported back to the Battle of Culloden 200 years earlier, where she must marry a Scot to save her husband. (RITA Award)
-Mary Buck
Other titles you might like, most from a list compiled by the Young Adult Library Services Association:
"A Great and Terrible Beauty" by Libba Bray. 16 year old Gemma returns to England to attend finishing school, where she becomes aware of her magical powers.
"Marked" by P. C. Cast. Zoey Redbird is Marked as a fledgling vampire and joins the House of Night.
"Look for Me By Moonlight" by Mary Downing Hahn. Cynda feels increasingly isolated from her father's new family and finds solace in the attentions of a charming but mysterious guest at the family's remote Maine inn.
"Blood and Chocolate" by Annette Curtis Klause. Having fallen for a
human boy, a beautiful teenage werewolf must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople to decide where she belongs and with whom.
"In the Forests of the Night" by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Risika is a vampire of great strength and power who still remembers her former life and the morals she held as a human. As a vampire she struggles to come to an understanding of her new life and tries to find a balance between the two.
"Vampire Kisses" by Ellen Schrieber. In her small town, dubbed "Dullsville," sixteen-year-old Raven -- a vampire-crazed goth-girl -- is an outcast. But not for long...
