The eternal question: what to read next! We love to make book recommendations, but if the library is closed, there’s a great resource that you can access through our library website. We’ve recently moved our Reading Online Resources closer to the top of the list at: https://eapld.org/online-resources/. Just click on Novelist or Novelist K-8 (for children’s books). Type in a title or an author to find reading suggestions for books that are similar in subject, tone, or pacing.

The Aurora Public Library District has recently upgraded to a more robust version of Novelist that provides access to all of the Novelist features directly through our online catalog. Just do a catalog search for a book you enjoyed. Select the book title from the search results , and then look for the “Related” link on the left side of the page. Here’s what my screen looked like when I searched the online catalog for the book An American Marriage.

As you can see, Novelist suggested similar titles and similar authors. Scrolling down further will show a tab with Story Elements. By clicking on the elements that you enjoy, you may find additional titles. Here I selected Character-driven, Domestic Fiction, and Southern Fiction.

Scrolling down more will show both book reviews and awards won by the book. Another way you can use Novelist is to determine the order of books in a series. You can do this directly from Novelist, but if the book you are reading is part of a series, you can also grab this information from the Novelist input to the catalog. For example, if I have started the Louise Penny books, but don’t know which book comes after A Great Reckoning, I can search for that title, click on the Related tab, and all the books in the series will be shown in order. You can see that in the image below.

Play around with Novelist through the direct link and also within the online catalog. I bet you’ll find some great new books to enjoy! As always, if you need help with this resource, just ask one of the Library staff.