Please recommend YA books for 15yo DD

The Gone series are very good as well as hunger games.
Having an avid reader at home she started at the Brinte sisters and loved it although she kept asking why?.
Lord of the Rings was another favourite here and sherlock holmes stories...

I Capture the Castle is good but I found it hard going and usually can devour anything

Brilliant suggestion re the James Herriott books; we read them over and over

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare was a favorite

I loved the books by MM Kaye as a teen: epics like The Far Pavillions, Trade Winds etc. and her shorter light mystery series is very good of its kind. Romance but no hard core sex in any of the books. Kaye's three-volume bio of her young womanhood is interesting too.

How about non-fiction bios? One I liked was "Maiden Voyage" by Tania Aebi, about a young woman who opts to sail around the world solo in lieu of attending college.

For old-fashioned historical romance the books from the 1960s by Victoria Holt were a favorite Mistress of Mellyn, King of the Castle etc. typical governess falls for the lord of the manor stuff but with some gothic mystery thrown in.

I like the Britt Montero series by crime writer Edna Buchanan the main character is a Miami newspaper journalist who gets embroiled in crime-solving it's well-written from the 30-something reporter's POV, lots of romantic foibles but no hard-core sex -- scenes fade out when the characters hit the bedroom except for one that I recall and I've read the series multiple times. (keep hoping for one more but Edna's in her 70s...) Probably easy to locate on Amazon. Have her read them in order... starts with Contents Under Pressure.

At that age I was all into epic fantasy. As long as you don't wander into Gor or something like that (which I did - whoops) you are fairly safe.

I'd suggest anything by David Eddings or the Wheel of time by Robert Jordan. Both have some references to sex and violence but not explicitly the way it often is in a thriller.

Also anything by Asimov is good. A lot of his stories really make you think which can only be good.

If you want more traditional YA fayre how about The Tripods or The prince in waiting books by John Christopher? Or The Crysalids by John Wyndham?

YA:

I Capture The Castle (a coming of age classic)
The Fault in Our Stars ( two teens fall in love, they both have cancer)
The Hunger Games

Adult but nothing too extreme:

Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy
Anything by Jodie Picoult, her latest (think its called Leaving Time is especially readable and one of the main protagonists is a teenage girl)
Gladys Mitchell - interwar detective stories much like Agatha Christie.

I would just encourage her to go to the library, tbh, and have a good look around.

Or maybe she could look up lists of cult books?

Remus, when I was at school we used to read the Skinhead books - they were a lot worse than fifty shades of shite!

YY re 50 Shades and its ilk though. NOBODY should be reading that crap, let alone teenage girls!

I honestly don't think you should be telling her what she can/can't read at 15. By 15, she'll be aware of far more than you might wish her to be aware of, and reading is a safe way of finding out about things. I'd rather my children read books than watched a lot of the films that young adults these days seem to watch without batting an eye, tbh.

A fantastic YA series is Lian Hearne's 'Tales of the Otari' - it has an awful lot of sex and violence though! Dd1 read it at about 10/11 and survived the experience, although she did tell me later that she was fine with the violence but skipped some of the sex!

And yes to Stephen King. I'd recommend, 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' or 'Misery' or 'Cujo' as a starting point.

I grew up on Agatha Christie and Mary Stewart books. I particularly love The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart.

Description on Amazon (doesn't do it justice:

An English June in the Roman Wall countryside; the ruin of a beautiful old house standing cheek-by-jowl with the solid, sunlit prosperity of the manor farm - a lovely place, and a rich inheritance for one of the two remaining Winslow heirs. There had been a third, but Annabel Winslow had died four years ago - so when a young woman calling herself Annabel Winslow comes 'home' to Whitescar, Con Winslow and his half-sister Lisa must find out whether she really is who she says she is.

If she likes The Ivy Tree I can guarantee she'll want to read all the others.

There are a couple of MNetters I know who've written YA adult - one set in the future, another in the past. Each of them is really well written and tell a great story.

www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Wounds-Katharine-Edgar/dp/0993159214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446140717&sr=8-1&keywords=katharine+edgar Five Wounds by Katharine Edgar]]

Description on Amazon:

It is 1536. The north of England has boiled over into rebellion against Henry VIII and the rebels march south towards London, growing stronger by the day. Sixteen-year-old Nan Ellerton, sent home from her convent when the King's commissioners arrived, has been promised in marriage to a powerful lord. When both he and his son Francis become embroiled in the revolt, Nan must choose - help the rebels, even though it could mean paying the brutal penalty for treason, or betray her beliefs and risk eternal damnation. A stunning historical novel for teenagers from debut author Katharine Edgar, Five Wounds tells a story of adventure, passion and courage, set against the backdrop of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Changed Souls by Harriet Truscott

Description on Amazon:

After the virus came, everything changed. Seventeen ­year-old Lucille is left with just a pile of debt to remind her of her dead family and their failed farm. Working for the Mayor to control the spread of the disease seems like a chance to repay her father’s betrayal. Now, the city is under an authoritarian regime, incinerating bodies, rationing food and quarantining families. When Lucille is called to the Mayor’s own apartment to take away a murder victim, everyone but her seems intent on a cover-up. Then the only person she trusts disappears… Little by little, Lucille realises that the service she put her faith in is corrupt to the core. And now she must learn to make her own choices about what loyalty and betrayal mean.

Noughts and crosses by malorie Blackman.

Forgive the "you know, maybe" repetition in paragraph starts I composed the message over the course of the last 20 minutes. I've been working all day! I'm tired!

You know, maybe Louise O'Neill might have been the wrong recommendation alright, countess, particularly Asking For It. I mean, I think it's dealing with really important themes for teens, especially consent, but it's hard going alright and you know your daughter best, OP. I agree with the Countess that vetted adult fiction might be better.

You know, maybe an author like Jodi Picoult probably would be OK. Personally, I don't like her books, but think they would be good for teens ready to move on. They generally have interesting stories and are usually not too violent or 'sexy'. Based on what your daughter has been reading, it might be a good stepping stone into adult fiction.

I don't think staying in YA is going to work as a way to avoid sex and violence, though.

I found The Knife of Letting Go trilogy very violent, for instance. And the new Louise O'Neill is about rape and while I am sure it will be excellent, I doubt she pulls any punches.

If you're worried about keeping her away from explicit material and want an easy rule of thumb for how to do it, you're better off steering her towards adult fiction from an earlier period. (Obviously there are exceptions, but if you avoid the obvious things like Henry Miller or A Clockwork Orange or genres like horror you'll probably be ok.)

I don't really think you should worry though - at 15 she should be reading adult fiction and can probably cope with more shocking stuff than you think.

DD is loving Val McDiarmid's Northanger Abbey ATM. How about Georgette Heyer?

Basically it's about picking a genre she likes and then going for either YA or adult world in that genre.

But most of us spent our late teens reading Virginia Andrews, Shirley Conran, Steven King and James Herbert surely, with little ill effects.

I can recommend Irish author, Louise O'Neill. She has two YA books out, Only Ever Yours a few years ago, and Asking For It, this year. That said, they are really for more mature teens I suppose - really important themes and ideas, but both are quite serious, particularly Asking For It.

I strayed into adult books fairly young too and I seriously think some of them should be age restricted. I used to read Horror (Richard Laymon, Shaun Hutson etc) and it really was not suitable.

Recently read a YA series by Michael Grant starting with 'Gone' and thought they were brilliant, not too childish but not too adult either.

I was dipping into my parents' books at about 12 or 13. Most of my sex education came from Ken Follett and Jean M. Auel I think that as long as the subjects are dealt with appropriately in the book (I.e she's not just reading American Psycho or GoT) then it can be a good introduction to adult themes. One of the most popular YA books when I was a teenager was Judy Blume's 'Forever', which dealt with a teenager's first sexual relationship (and subsequent break up). The main thing I remember about it however, is that in it, his penis was called Ralph.

Anyway, back on topic, Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy is very good, likewise Trudi Canavan's Magician's Guild books. Much less 'wet' than things like TFIOS.

I'm with CoteDAzur, why do you want to steer her away from Adult fiction? I started reading adult books at 13, as I had outgrown my childhood books and there wasn't really any teen stuff around then.

Most books don't have huge amounts of sex in unless they are erotica, and she is old enough to read about sex in books.

"She is quite mature for her age and has started to stray into the "adult fiction" section of our local library recently and I'd like to steer her away from there for a bit longer"

Why?

Some of the books I listed are not really designated as Young Adult but none of them have much in the way of sex or violence. Well Herriots books do but mostly animals.

The two Jonathan Stroud series
Bartimaeus Sequence
Lockwood & Co.

Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Terry Pratchetts Discworld

Eoin Coifer - Airman

P. G. Wodehouse - Jeeves & Wooster series

James Herriots vet books

Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, The Road to Little Dribbling.

Alexander McCall Smith - No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series