Six Free Teen & Fantasy Books Worth Discovering
Posted by George Hartley
Confession from the person who runs this library: I went through the staff picks shelf this week and found the crime section thriving, romance well looked after, and the fantasy shelf sitting there completely empty. Not one pick. That felt a bit rough for the genre that got most of us reading in the first place, so I made a coffee and went digging through the download charts to fix it.
Here is what I surfaced: six books from our teen and fantasy shelves that readers have been quietly hammering for years. Every one of them is free, no card and no catch, and they all come in epub, PDF and Kindle so you can read them offline wherever you like.
The teen shelf
Diary of the Dead by Matthew Watts is the most downloaded teen book on Obooko, sitting at over 41,000 downloads. It is written as a school kid's diary, which sounds sweet until the voodoo doll turns up with his face on it. Short, creepy fun in the best campfire tradition, and the first in Watts' Fear Series if it hooks you.
Enchanted Castle by Chrissy Peebles sends Zoey Sanders off to finish high school at a mysterious castle in Scotland, where a fresh start turns into a paranormal world she never asked for. Peebles has a big following in indie YA and this is an easy place to see why.
The fantasy shelf, no longer empty
Delver Magic: Sanctum's Breach by Jeff Inlo is the most rated fantasy book in the library (157 readers have scored it, and it still holds five stars). Magic returns to the land of Uton after a long absence, an ancient evil comes back with it, and a delver named Ryson Acumen goes looking for answers. Proper epic fantasy, first of a long series.
The Prophet of Panamindorah by Abigail Hilton starts with a boy in an orphanage who speaks a language nobody recognises and is scared of cars. Then he meets a fauness in an orange grove and things get properly strange. Book one of a trilogy, and the rest is here when you are ready.
The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher is the download king of the fantasy shelf at over 12,000. Urban fantasy about Rae Wilder, who gets plunged into dark magic and fierce creatures and has to choose between staying human or becoming something wilder. moves like a freight train.
Dangerous Designs by Dale Mayer follows seventeen-year-old Storey Dalton, who discovers her drawings are coming to life. Mayer went on to become a genuinely huge name in romantic suspense, and you can feel it in the pacing here. Fair warning from the author herself: it ends on a cliffhanger, and the sequel picks up right where it stops.
Grab a couple
Four of the six are the start of a series, which is either generous of me or a trap, depending on how your weekend was looking. If none of these land, there are hundreds more in the teen library and on the fantasy shelves, or you can browse the full staff picks any time.
Happy reading. The fantasy shelf is empty no longer.