Age appropriate books for advanced reader 13yr old boy

To Kill a Mockingbird

George Orwell
Douglas Adams
Aidan Chambers

A Monster Calls
They Both Die In the End
We Are All Made of Molecules
The Catcher In The Rye

I read a few of the original Hardy Boys a few years ago.
They were sooooooo dull 😂

Would the Hardy Boys be too young/too retro?
Agatha Christie maybe?

What about all the Agatha Christies?

Almost all fantasy / SF has no sex or relationships or is only touched on very lightly.

Lord of the rings
Mistborn
Stormlight Archive
Lies of Locke Lamora
Sabriel
Terry Prachett
Neverwhere
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Eyre Affair

Historical fiction too:
Sharpe books
Bernard Cornwall
The Three Musketeers

There is so so much. Go to the library and let him loose! At 13 there isnt really an “age inappropriate” book imo

Yeah this is what I don’t understand. They’re reading everything at 13 - there’s no other “level” to read. Do you mean he’s an avid reader? Then if that’s the case let him read anything he wants.

my 12 almost 13 year old is reading Hunger Games at the moment. And also recently read the maze runner.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn still good reads if you'd like to encourage him to read widely ie different time period, different dialect etc.

Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks if he likes fantasy.

Alan gratz

Stephen King may have some very occasional sex stuff in it in a very small way. But a lot would go over his head, as it did mine at that age. He is just a very good writer. It's not Jackie Collins.

And think what is easily found on the internet these days, even by chance..... Stephen King is not a problem.

My DS14 (year 9) is an advanced reader too, and to be honest, after a period of only wanting to read scientific non fiction like Ben Goldacre I was pleased he wanted to balance it with some fiction and I let him read what he wants.

I spoke to his English teacher about the sort of authors he was wanting to read and she was all for it, the only note of caution was that he might not get the most out of some of the more challenging reads and would probably want to read them again in a few years.

He‘s enjoyed Dickens, Austen, etc, but also Orwell, Camus and Kafka. I bought him the guide to Penguin modern classics and he’s enjoyed going through that deciding which authors appeal to him.

Being such a wide reader does open him up to adult themes and we talk about these together. He read the Handmaid’s Tale recently and had a great conversation about personal freedoms, especially in the context of the current political situation in America. This past year his teachers have all remarked on how much he’s developed academically and they have put it down in part to his wide reading.

Has he read all the stuff you just read for pure enjoyment at that age? eg Percy Jackson series, Artemis Fowl?

He might try the Hatful of Sky/Tiffany books by Pratchett? Some reference to relationships in a couple of them, I recall, but not too much.

Another vote for Cherub.
I love the Charlie Higson zombie series books if he doesn’t mind a bit of gore
The more boyish classics - Ivanhoe/Robinson Crusoe/Wilkie Collins/some Dickens

Older books as in written in the 20th century… the writing style is more in depth, even with “children’s” books like animals of farthing wood or Watership down- meatier writing with words he might have to look up to understand etc.

Sci fi? Classics like Hitchikers Guide or Contact? Or Dune?

You want to avoid sex/want age appropriate and you’re going with Stephen King?!

Good call, I was going to suggest those.

Ours started on the Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell at about that age, he's read about ten of them by now. He also really loved Dracula.

I'd be happy for him to read almost anything he wanted but I'd draw the line at anything deliberately subversive - plenty of time for the Naked Lunch or His Dark Materials later, no need for that sort of thing while they're still settling down imo.

Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co series, Scarlett and Browne series, and his Bartmaieus series.
Garth Nix’s Sabriel series.
John Christopher’s Tripods trilogy.
Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines series, Railhead series and Here Lies Arthur.
John Wyndham
Isaac Asimov
Rosemary Sutcliff
Douglas Adams
Terry Pratchett
Diana Wynne Jones
Agatha Christie

I may have been an outlier but I was about that age when I got hold of a Sherlock Holmes omnibus edition and never looked back.

If he likes mystery stuff how about historical fiction? CJ Sansoms Shardlake series isn't very relationship heavy.

The usual fantasy stuff like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, or maybe the Chronicles of Prydain by LLoyd Alexander? Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

I find a lot of the modern teen fiction a bit....woke. Or they might be a fun read but perhaps they're formulaic and not very challenging.

He should read a wide variety of genres if possible. Some of the classics would be very challenging to today's 13 year olds but are worth a go. He'll probably find the language very archaic at first.

I really liked Cherub and the prequel series Henderson's Boys - but they are very violent and have plots with drugs, bad language etc.
Henderson's Boys is set in the second world war and was a bit tough going in some parts (for me a grown up adult reader 🙂).