Horror Library

A host of the smartest young adult authors come together in this collection of scary stories and psychological thrillers curated by Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea's April Genevieve Tucholke. Each story draws from a classic tale or two - sometimes of the horror genre, sometimes not - to inspire something new and fresh and terrifying. There are no superficial scares here; these are stories that will make you think even as they keep you on the edge of your seat.

A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal's life. Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he's infected the girlfriends he's had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires.

Audie Award, Young Adult, 2016. After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to "read" objects and therefore read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, "America's Sweetheart Seer". But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners' abilities.... Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer?

Meet the Sinister-Winterbottoms: brave Theo, her timid twin, Alexander, and their older sister, Wil. They’re stuck for the summer with their Aunt Saffronia, who doesn’t know how often children need to eat and can’t use a smartphone, and whose feet never quite seem to touch the floor when she glides—er—walks. When Aunt Saffronia suggests a week pass to the Fathoms of Fun Waterpark, they hastily agree. But the park is even stranger than Aunt Saffronia. Something mysterious is happening at Fathoms of Fun, and it’s up to the twins to get to the bottom of it.

Freshman year stinks for Vlad Tod. Bullies still harass him. The photographer from the school newspaper is tailing him. And failing his studies could be deadly. A trip to Siberia gives "study abroad" a whole new meaning as Vlad connects with other vampires and advances his mind-control abilities, but will he return home with the skills to recognize a vampire slayer when he sees one? In this thrilling sequel to Eighth Grade Bites, Vlad must confront the secrets of the past and battle forces that once again threaten his life.

It is 1659 and Mary Newbury, theyoung granddaughter of a witch, sees her wise and beloved grandmother tortured and hanged as a servant of the Devil. Then a stranger with hauntingly familiar eyes approaches her with an opportunity - safe passage to America. But the difficult ocean voyage only leads her to a community of inflexible, fearful grownups who try to decide for her who and what she will be. Mary must disguise herself as a pious Puritan girl, hiding her true nature, or else face terrible danger once again.

New girl Rachel Chavez turns to horror movies for comfort, preferring stabby serial killers and homicidal dolls to the bored rich kids of Manhattan Prep...and to certain memories she’d preferred to keep buried. Then Rachel is recruited by the Mary Shelley Club, a mysterious society of students who orchestrate Fear Tests, elaborate pranks inspired by urban legends and movie tropes. At first, Rachel embraces the power that comes with reckless pranking. But as the Fear Tests escalate, the competition turns deadly, and it’s clear Rachel is playing a game she can’t afford to lose.

After her parents' painful divorce, Evie Archer hopes that moving to Ravenglass, Massachusetts, is the fresh start her family needs. But Evie quickly realizes that her new home—known by locals as the Horror House—carries its own dark past after learning about Holly Hobbie, who mysteriously vanished from her bedroom one night. But traces of Holly linger in the Horror House and slowly begin to take over Evie's life. A strange shadow follows her everywhere she goes, and Evie starts to lose sight of what's real and what isn't the more she learns about The Lost Girl.

Faolan Kelly’s grandfather is dead. She’s alone in the world and suddenly homeless, all because the local powers that be don’t think a young man of seventeen is mature enough to take over his grandfather’s homestead…and that’s with them thinking Faolan is a young man. If she revealed that her grandfather had been disguising her for years, they would marry her off at the first opportunity. The mayor finds a solution that serves everyone but Faolan: He hires a gunslinger to ship her off to the Settlement, a remote fort where outcasts live under the leadership of His Benevolence Gideon Dillard.

On the capital world of Potence, young enforcer cadet Rudgard Howe is caught up in a bitter internecine feud to inherit his father's position of chief enforcer. As the tithe fleets approach, he is sent on his first mission to ensure that the planet's distant agri-facilities fulfil their quotas to the god-emperor. Farmed with serfs and managed by ex-Militarum soldiers, the agri-facilities are places of shocking brutality and hopelessness.

On the mean streets of Altdorf, Guard Captain 'Filthy Harald' Kleindeist investigates a series of gruesome murders that take him into the upper echelons of Imperial society and expose horrors beyond imagining.

Everyone has heard the story of the Narrow. The river that runs behind the Atwood School is only a few feet across and seemingly placid, but beneath the surface, the waters are deep and vicious. It’s said that no one who has fallen in has ever survived. Eden White knows that isn’t true. Six years ago, she saw Delphine Fournier fall into the Narrow—and live.

It's been two weeks since Evie escaped the mines after solving the mystery of Holly's disappearance only to discover that Desmond followed her but never came back. Evie knows he’s alive, lost wherever the Patchwork Girl resides. When Evie tries to reach out to Holly again for help, she realizes that her connection to the Lost Girl has been severed. Desmond is gone, and it’s all her fault. Ravenglass slowly begins to move on from the tragedy of losing Desmond, but as winter creeps closer and the days grow shorter, a sinister being begins to threaten the lives of Ravenglass residents.

After battling a sleeping sickness, The Diviners are up against a group of new and malevolent foes - ghosts! Out in Ward's Island sits a mental hospital full of lost souls from people long forgotten. Ghosts who have unusual and dangerous ties to the Man in the Stovepipe Hat also known as the King of Crows. With terrible accounts of murder and possession flooding in from all over New York City, the Diviners must band together and brave the ghosts haunting the asylum to bring down the King of Crows.

Clean slate. That's what Hendricks Becker-O'Malley's parents said when they moved their family to the tiny town of Drearfield, New York. Hendricks wants to lay low and forget her dark, traumatic past. Forget him. But things don't go as planned. Hendricks learns from new friends at school that Steele House--the fixer upper her parents are so excited about--is notorious in town. Local legend says it's haunted. But Hendricks isn't sure if it's the demons of her past haunting her ...or of the present. Voices whisper in her ear as she lays in bed.

Elizabeth Lavenza hasn't had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her "caregiver", and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets...until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything - except a friend. Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable - and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk.

All they need to do is get out. Alissa, Sky, Miles and Mint are ready for a night of fun at the Escape Room. It's simple. Choose their game. Get locked in a room. Find the clues. Solve the puzzles. And escape the room in 60 minutes. But what happens if the Game Master has no intention of letting them go?

Meet teenage Wiccan Mila Flores, who truly could not care less what you think about her Doc Martens, her attitude, or her weight because she knows that, no matter what, her BFF Riley is right by her side. So when Riley and Fairmont Academy mean girls June Phelan-Park and Dayton Nesseth die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone's explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life.

Esme and Kayla once were campers at Camp Pine Lake. Now they’re back as counselors-in-training. Esme loves the little girls in her cabin and thinks it’s funny how scared they are of everything - the woods, the bugs, the boys...even swimming in the lake. It reminds her of how she and Kayla used to be. Before... Because Esme and Kayla did something terrible when they were campers. Something they’ve kept a secret all these years.

A fancy hotel + no parents = party time for four friends celebrating a birthday weekend. But when an uninvited party guest seeking revenge turns up, the fun quickly turns into a nightmare.