Rick Riordan

It used to be that the only adults who read young adult literature were those who had a vested interest -- teachers or librarians or parents who either needed or wanted to keep an eye on developing readers' tastes. But increasingly, adults are reading YA books with no ulterior motives. Attracted by well-written, fast-paced and engaging stories that span the gamut of genres and subjects, such readers have mainstreamed a niche long derided as just for kids. Thanks to huge crossover hits like Stephenie Meyer's bloodsucking "Twilight" saga, Suzanne Collins' fight-to-the-death "The Hunger Games" trilogy, Rick Riordan's "The Lightning Thief" and Markus Zusak's Nazi-era "The Book Thief," YA is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak publishing market.

Fiction 1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ($14.95) 2. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery ($15) 3. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout ($14) 4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows ($14) 5. The Private Patient by P.D. James ($15) 6. The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee ($15) 7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy ($14.

Tod Goldberg reviews "Beautiful Children," a novel by Charles Bock, and "The Delivery Man," a novel by Joe McGinniss Jr. Joe Conason reviews "The Bush Tragedy" by Jacob Weisberg. Tim Rutten reviews "The Expeditions," a novel by Karl Iagnemma. The following reviews are scheduled: Fred Schruers reviews "My First Movie, Take Two: Ten Celebrated Directors Talk About Their First Film" edited by Stephen Lowenstein. Laurel Maury reviews "Democracy and Torture" by Darius Rejali.

The Peculiar A Novel Stefan Bachmann Greenwillow Books: 384 pp., $16.99, ages 9 and up The average 16-year-old who writes usually does so for school, bringing the same level of rigor and enthusiasm to the endeavor as he would to cleaning a public toilet. Not Stefan Bachmann, a teenager who makes his authorial debut with a middle-grade novel so polished and fun to read that one would never suspect he was in high school when he began to write it. "The Peculiar" is the title of Bachmann's steampunk fairy tale set in an alternate Victorian-era London - a book that, at times, recalls Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and more recent classics, such as J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" and Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events.

CAST: Logan Lerman, Rosario Dawson, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Catherine Keener. Directed by Chris Columbus. BACK STORY: Based on the Rick Riordan bestseller, a huge fan favorite among 10-year-old boys, the film tells of young Percy, a fatherless kid suffering from dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, who discovers that he's actually the son of the immortal Poseidon and that the mythic Mount Olympus of Greek gods...

"The Lightning Thief" Rick Riordan Perseus (Percy) Jackson finds out he's a half-blood, which means he's half-human and half-god. His mother sends him to a camp named Camp Half-Blood. There he trains as a warrior. Percy's father is a god too. At camp, his father (Poseidon, the Sea God) claims Percy as his son. Little does Percy know that soon he will go on a heart-bending quest to find Zeus' master lightning bolt.