Magic Horror

Featuring stories from R.L. Stine and Madeleine Roux, this middle-grade horror anthology, curated by New York Times best-selling author and master of macabre Jonathan Maberry, is a chilling tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Flesh-hungry ogres? Brains full of spiders? Haunted houses you can’t escape? This collection of 35 terrifying stories from the Horror Writers Association has it all, including ghastly illustrations from Iris Compiet that will absolutely chill listeners to the bone.

Last summer, Mackenzie Bishop, a Keeper tasked with stopping violent Histories from escaping the Archive, almost lost her life to one. Now, as she starts her junior year at Hyde School, she's struggling to get her life back. But moving on isn't easy - not when her dreams are haunted by what happened. She knows the past is past, knows it cannot hurt her, but it feels so real, and when her nightmares begin to creep into her waking hours, she starts to wonder if she's really safe.

Marshall Seaver is being haunted. In the first installment of this chillingly compelling trilogy, sixteen-year-old Marshall discovers that something beyond our world is after him. The eerie clues pile up quickly, and when people start dying, it's clear whatever this is - it's huge. Marshall has no idea what's happening to him, but he's soon convinced that it has something to do with his best friend, Cooper, who's been missing for over a week.

He's the seventh son of a seventh son. He's the only one who can stop the greatest evil. Tom Ward, the Spook's last apprentice, has everything he needs to vanquish the Fiend, once and for all: the three blades recovered from the dark, the gifts from his witch mother, and the skills he's learned from Master Gregory. And Alice, the one he loves most, is willing to sacrifice herself to fulfill the spell. Or is she? Racing against time, all of Tom's old allies - and old enemies - return. They will clash in a final battle more epic than any he has fought before.

Tom Ward is now spook of the county, and with his apprentice, Jenny, he continues the fight against boggarts, witches, and terrifying new creatures of the dark. Together with the witch assassin Grimalkin, Tom and Jenny lead an army into battle against a dangerous enemy - but it all goes catastrophically wrong. The situation seems hopeless until Alice - Tom's lost love and a powerful witch - appears. But Alice had turned to the dark: Can Tom trust her now?

Something is terrorizing the villages of the county. People are dying - covered in blood, their faces frozen in fear. But with not a wound on their bodies. Battling creatures of the dark is the job of the local spook, but 17-year-old Thomas Ward never finished his apprenticeship. It will be no easy task to earn the trust of the villagers and to defeat a monster that no one has ever seen. Yet Jenny - a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter - knows an awful lot about this new evil. And she's willing to share what she's learned with Tom…if he takes her on as his apprentice.

After her near-fatal run-in with the Jack the Ripper copycat, Rory Deveaux has been living in Bristol under the close watch of her parents. So when her therapist suddenly suggests she return to Wexford, Rory jumps at the chance to get back to her friends. But Rory’s brush with the Ripper touched her more than she thought possible: She’s become a human terminus, with the power to eliminate ghosts on contact. She soon finds out that the Shades - the city’s secret ghost-fighting police - are responsible for her return. The Ripper may be gone, but now there is a string of new inexplicable deaths threatening London.

Sixteen-year-old Sunshine is reluctantly gaining control over her powers as a Luiseach. But while she explores her mystical lineage, she discovers a dangerous discordance - one only she can heal.

Lili St. Crow staked her place among writers of dark fantasy with the release of Strange Angels, the first book featuring night hunter Dru Anderson. Here teen Dru returns, a little wiser but still beset by supernatural terrors that would have most girls her age running for cover. What else would you expect for someone with nonhuman blood coursing through her veins?

A beautiful, ambitious angel stands on a mountaintop, surveying the world and its little inhabitants below. He smiles because soon, the last of humanity who survived the great flood will meet its end, too. And he should know. He's going to play a big part in it. Our angel usually doesn't get to do fieldwork, and if he does well, he's certain he'll get a big promotion.

Venture inside Midnight Under the Big Top, where your wide eyes and pounding heart will discover: the world's grandest tales of murder, madness, and magic set in and around the circus by storytellers such as Stephen King, Joe Hill, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Neil Gaiman, Kelley Armstrong, Robert McCammon, Tananarive Due, Lisa Morton, Heather Graham, Richard Chizmar, Billy Chizmar, Amanda C. Davis, Nayad Monroe, Jeff Strand, Amanda Downum, Robert Brouhard, and Dominick Cancilla!

It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now armed with his father's mysterious and deadly atheme, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay. Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage.

Thomas Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son, and apprentice to the local Spook. He has battled boggarts, witches, and the most powerful evils of the Dark. But his most trying task is yet to come. When Tom and the Spook are deceived by one they trust, they find themselves in the most terrifying danger yet. Blood-hungry creatures have invaded a sleepy village. Tom can save the Spook - and the whole county - but only by betraying one of his greatest allies. With everything on the line, Tom must have the courage to stand and fight, and to face a choice that could break his heart.

In isolated British Columbia, girls, mostly native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway. Leo Kreutzer and his four friends are barely touched by these disappearances-until a series of mysterious and troublesome outsiders come to town. Then it seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them.

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans have learned to live in relative peace. Still, students like Claire Danvers know that after dark, studying can take a backseat to staying alive. But the tenuous good-neighbor policy is really turned on its head with the arrival of Mr. Bishop. Bad to the bone, the ancient old-school vampire cares nothing about harmony.

It's July in New York City, and aspiring filmmaker Wes Auckerman has just arrived to start his summer term at NYU. While shooting a séance at a psychic's in the East Village, he meets a mysterious, intoxicatingly beautiful girl named Annie.

Just as Sophie Mercer has come to accept her extraordinary magical powers as a demon, the Prodigium Council strips them away. Now Sophie is defenseless, alone, and at the mercy of her sworn enemies - the Brannicks, a family of warrior women who hunt down the Prodigium. Or at least that's what Sophie thinks, until she makes a surprising discovery. The Brannicks know an epic war is coming, and they believe Sophie is the only one powerful enough to stop the world from ending.

I never asked for these powers. I never asked to be yanked away from my perfectly good life and forced to come here. But the gods have gifted me with magic, and now I have no choice. If I was smart, I’d keep my head down and play it safe until I can graduate. And I definitely wouldn’t go up against the three gorgeous, infuriating men who rule the school - Trace, Merrick, and Lachlan. But when we’re all chosen to compete in the Gods’ challenge, a deadly competition for the honor of meeting the gods themselves, teaming up with my bullies may be my only chance at survival.

The dark is full of terrifying creatures. And Tom Ward - the seventh son of a seventh son, and the Spook's last apprentice - hasn't seen all of them. Far from the county, one named Slither has lived for hundreds of years, hunting blood. But a dying father binds the monster to a bargain. If Slither will take his two youngest daughters safely to their family in the south, then the eldest daughter, Nessa, is his.