Family Horror

New Hampshire, 1865. Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder. Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief. Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.

Ava, 14 years old and totally on her own, has still not fully processed her mother’s death when she finds herself on a train heading to New Orleans, to stay with Lane, the grandmother she barely remembers. Lane is a well-known artist in the New Orleans art scene. She spends most of her days in a pot-smoke haze, sipping iced coffee, and painting. Her grip on reality is shaky at best, but her work provides a comfort. Ava’s arrival unsettles Lane. The girl bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter, whom she was estranged from before her death.

Ricki has one goal: save the Starlight Drive-In movie theater from going dark forever. Okay, make that two goals...she may also want a first kiss from her cinema-rescuing partner and major crush, Jake. Lana definitely has only one goal: grow her online makeup channel to keep her momager off her back, even if the posts attract ugly internet trolls. The two cousins couldn’t be more different, but their opposite personalities come crashing to a head when their aunt gifts the girls a vintage cotton-candy-pink convertible. To share.

Fourteen-year-old Jenna Samuels is having a very bad eighth-grade year. Her mother spends all day in bed, her father has vanished, and her 16-year-old brother Casey tries to hold the family together. And Jenna is sick. When she collapses one day, Casey crashes driving her to the hospital. Jenna wakes up in the ER to find Casey beside her. But Casey didn’t survive the accident at all. Casey has been sent back to help solve the mystery that not only holds the key to her survival, but also to their mother’s mysterious depression and father’s disappearance

Oh, to be a Beloved - one of those lucky people for whom nothing ever goes wrong. Everything falls into their laps without effort: happiness, beauty, good fortune, allure. Betty Stash is not a Beloved - but her little sister, the delightful Gloria, is. She's the one with the golden curls and sunny disposition and captivating smile, the one whose best friend used to be Betty's, the one whose husband should have been Betty's. Then, to everyone's surprise, Gloria inherits the family mansion. Losing what Betty considers her rightful inheritance is the final indignity.

After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they've summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. It's there that the ghost appears - a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not-Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die, and their overwhelmed parents can't see what's happening.

When 13-year-old Eric Parrish comes across glowing mushrooms in the woods behind his house, he's sure there's a scientific explanation. But when they start encroaching on the town - covering the football field and popping up from beneath the floorboards - Eric knows something's seriously wrong. Not that much else is going right.... Then a runaway girl from a nearby boarding school warns Eric that the fungus could portend doom.

Growing up, Adrien and his sister, Grace, competed viciously for everything. It wasn't easy being the adopted sibling, but Adrien tried to get along; it was Grace who didn't want anything to do with him. When their scientist parents died in a terrible lab fire, there was nothing left to hold them together. Now, after years apart, Adrien and Grace are forced to reunite at the elite boarding school where their parents were teachers.

On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh, known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town simply as the Twins.

Kerry is chosen by the coolest clique in school, and so she thinks life has finally begun. But then it seems all over when her three friends are killed in a shocking car accident. Or are they? Only weeks after the accident, Kerry receives a text from one of the girls: "Were all 3 here at my aunts in the city. Take the 3:50 train. B there." Exhilarating suspense is crossed with a thought-provoking examination of peer pressure in Richard Peck's return to his contemporary teen- and ghost-story roots.

After her husband's death, Anne LaForet is alone to raise her young daughter in an area of the swamp that is too foul to grow anything. Anne is no criminal, but circumstances force her to resort to theft. When an encounter threatens to put her away for her crimes, Anne accidentally discovers that she also has another skill, one that helps women who can't conceive become pregnant.

Wade is only nine. He’s had a rough life. In 1944 Mississippi, there is nowhere for him to turn. After years of surviving on his own, a nice, well-dressed man offers young Wade a place to stay for a few days, thinking his wife would be overjoyed. Whatever Wade expected, this isn’t it. Luthor and his wife, Gabrielle, are charming people. At first. But as young Wade soon discovers, people are not always what they seem. Did Wade jump from the frying pan into the fire? And if so, will he survive to tell about it? A Winchester County novella.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.

Fourteen-year-old Jeremy Barker is obsessed with zombie movies. He attends an all-boys Catholic High School where roving gangs in plaid make his days a living hell. His mother is an absentee pillhead, his older brother a self-diagnosed sex-addict, and his father an ex-Marine realtor who disappears night after night without explanation. Jeremy navigates it all with a code cobbled together from Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, Planet Terror, Zombieland, and Shaun of the Dead.

Who cares if they're not normal? Neither am I. Life has not been easy for Alex Winters since he used his Pyrokinetic powers to take control of the Russian district. Violence and betrayal have become a way of life, but he's somehow managed to keep the gangsters in line. At barely sixteen, he thinks he's seen it all. He hasn't. Things spiral out of control when the latest double cross takes a turn for the supernatural. The new group muscling in on his territory turn out to be a brutal gang of vampires.

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby is a teenage grim reaper with the bizarre ability to Damn souls. That makes her pretty scary, even to fellow Grims. But after inadvertently transferring her ability to Zara, a murderous outlaw, Lex is a pariah in Croak, the little town she calls home. To escape the townspeople’s wrath, she and her friends embark on a wild road trip to DeMyse. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, it feels like a prison to Lex.

Deryn didn’t realize what she was getting into when she agreed to watch little Iris for three days. When Iris’ grandfather, Red, escapes from death row and comes to Etawah looking for the child, Deryn will have to confront her own dark past to find the strength to keep them both alive.

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

Willa has never fully recovered from the sudden death of her husband Ben. She became an absent mother to her young son, Jamie, unable to comfort him while reeling from her own grief. Years after Ben’s death, Willa finally decides to return to the beach house where he passed. When Willa arrives, the house is in worse shape than she could have imagined, and the memories of her time with Ben are overwhelming. They met at this house, and she sees him around every corner. Literally. Ben’s ghost keeps reappearing, trying to start conversations with Willa. And she can’t help talking back.

Topper is a hilarious, ribald comedy about a mild-mannered bank manager and two capricious ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, who make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life.