There's no doubt about it; paperbacks are popular!  But in recent years identifying the various genres of fiction has become rather complicated.  It used to be that a romance was a romance and a mystery was a mystery.  Things are not so cut and dried as that anymore.

There are seven main categories - or genres - that have been traditionally recognized:  general fiction (stories that do not address any of the other genres specifically), horror (the scary stuff); romance (your typical love story), mystery (the who-dunnits); westerns (tales set in the old west); science fiction (futuristic stories with aliens and high-tech devices); and fantasy (dragons, wizards, and the like).

But what happens when the main characters in a mystery fall in love while trying to dispatch aliens bent on destroying Earth?  Or a dragon from the future lands in Wyatt Earp's jurisdiction?  Or a vampire becomes the hero and figures out who dunnit?

It's kind of hard to classify stories when they encompass more than one of the traditional genres. 

At HPL we are trying to make choosing paperbacks easier for our patrons by changing the way we classify them.  Up until now we relied on colour-coding the spine labels with little dots; blue for westerns, green for sci-fi/fantasy, yellow for romances and orange for mysteries.

Now our patrons will see a different spine label appearing on our shelves.  We will still use colour coding to help identify genres, but the little dots will not be there.  Instead we will identify the type of book by clearly naming the type of story within.

Look for these identifiers on paperback spine labels:

Romance (yellow) - will be denoted as ROM.  This is contemporary romance.  HIST ROM - Historical romance; PARA ROM - paranormal romance (so if you don't want to mix romance with vampires, you'll want to avoid these!)

Mystery (orange) will be denoted as MYS.  HIST MYS - historical mystery, PARA MYS - paranormal mystery, etc.

Westerns (Blue) will be denoted as WES.  (We haven't come across any paranormal westerns - YET!

Science Fiction and Fantacy - (Green) will be denoted as either Sci-fi or FAN. 

Horror (dk. green) will be denoted as HOR. 

When there is a crossover between, let's say, Romance and Suspense, two colours will appear - ROM (in yellow) and SUSP (in orange). 

The words SUSP (suspence),THRILLER OR ADV (adventure) will appear in bolded black to let you know that you can expect on the pages of those paperbacks.

And if you are looking for TRUE CRIME, you'll find it written out in purple so you can be sure you are getting just the facts!

We hope this new system is helpful.  If you have any questions - or suggestions - please feel free to talk to one of our friendly staff members!

Happy reading!