Scary Fantasy

Kelly’s been a celebrity ever since she defeated the Boogeyman and his army of nightmares on Halloween. But now all the other monsters want revenge. And if Kelly’s going to survive Babysitter Bootcamp, she’ll have to face the Spider Queen, whose wicked web turns her parents, BFF, and middle-school teachers into mindless minions. All in a night’s work!

Imagine a Depression-era town where it hasn't rained for years. A pale rainmaker with other-worldly eyes brings rain to the countryside and mesmerizes the townspeople, but the children begin to disappear one by one. Only young Robert Steelgate is able to resist the rainmaker's spell and begin the struggle to discover what has happened to his missing brother and the other children.

Alex Sawyer has escaped his underground nightmare to discover the whole world has become a prison, and Alfred Furnace is its master. Monsters rule the streets, leaving nothing but murder in their wake. Those who do not die become slaves to Furnace's reign of cruelty. Alex is a monster too. He is the only one who can stop Furnace but in doing so he could destroy everything. Is he the executed or the executioner? Who will die? All Alex knows is that one way or another, it all ends now.

Beth doesn’t really have friends until she meets Lizzie, the girl who’s just moved into the upstairs apartment. At first, it seems like a perfect match. Lizzie likes all the same stuff and wants to hang out constantly. But the friendship turns creepy when Lizzie starts copying Beth’s style down to the smallest detail, and Beth can’t shake the strange feeling that she’s being silently studied. Did Beth find a BFF...or something more sinister?

Furnace Penitentiary: the world's most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth's surface. Convicted of a murder he didn't commit, sentenced to life without parole, "new fish" Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world. Except in Furnace, death is the least of his worries.

A group of six young miners are exploring Asteroid AX245 to find the mineral ixonium. It is the most valuable substance in the galaxy and is used to power interstellar travel. The group splits into three teams to explore some tunnels in the asteroid’s surface. But just before one team begins digging into the rock, they receive an urgent message. The other team reports seeing a black, gooey substance oozing out of the rock. Their report is cut off by their loud screams—and then total silence. What happened to Team Gamma? And what is the black goo that seems to have a will of its own?

Sam can't wait to go on her first cruise...sun, fun, and lots of good food. But when some slimy guests show up, Sam's excitement turns into fear. Do these gooey blob monsters want more than just the all-you-can-eat buffet?

Billy can’t wait to start frog dissections at school. It’ll be so slimy and gross! But his rowdy behavior earns him a boring alternate lab assignment instead. Now he’s out for revenge against the science teacher, spooky Ms. Wilson, with plans to leave a “witches' stew” of half-dissected amphibians on her desk. But when he sneaks into the classroom at night, something moves. Then it croaks. The frogs have come back to life!

When a zombie followed August DuPont home one day, he didn't expect her to stick around. But Claudette is in no hurry to leave August's side. And when he decides to go to Croissant City in search of the elusive Zombie Stone, Claudette joins him. It's a good thing she does, because no sooner had August set out than a mysterious white alligator began to follow him. Reptiles aren't the only creatures to look out for, though. When August is reunited with his dour cousins the Malveaus, and their menacing mother, Orchid, finding the stone before they do takes on a new urgency.

The second volume in the Dark Visions trilogy follows Kaitlyn Fairchild and her four friends as they listen to the psychic voices calling them and travel to an isolated house - where terror awaits.

Liv has been dealing with a lot lately. She and her family have just moved in with her mother's new boyfriend in London, and she's starting over (again) at a new school. But Liv isn't sure that explains her dreams, which have gone from odd to...well, bizarre. Lately her nighttime hours have been filled with talking stone statues, mysterious corridors, and creepy rituals conducted by four boys in a graveyard. The strangest part is that Liv recognizes the boys....

Seventeen-year-old Josephine Jagger is a talented writer with special abilities she doesn't fully understand. Over the years she has developed methods to cope with the voices she hears in her head, but the old house her family has inherited in Vermont makes Josephine question what's real and what's not more than anything she's ever encountered before. It's filled with shadows, and whispers, and the unshakable feeling of being watched. Josephine then catches her first glimpse of a shadowy woman with long hair, pale skin, an impossibly wide smile and hollow pits for eyes.

Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz's gothic novel in the grand Victorian tradition, Spledors and Glooms, is set in London and centered around the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl, who goes missing. Two children realize it is their guardian, a Venetian-born puppeteer and magician, who has kidnapped her and used his dark powers to imprison her mind and body in the form of a puppet and strive to return her to human form.

In Mexico, fitting in might be easier than Jed imagined, with holidays such as Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Here, a rising eighth-grade zombie boy and his zombie dog won't draw that much attention. But then Tread unwittingly sets off Mexico's Chupacabra Defense Network, and Jed accidentally collides with a bus. So much for blending in. The unusual pair catch the eye of a professional wrestler, who challenges Jed to a fight!

Jed's not your typical middle school geek. He is, to use the politically correct term, cardiovascularly challenged. And while his parents have attempted to shield him from the implications of being different for as long as they could (Jed was eight and at a friend's sister's birthday party when he blew his lips off onto the cake in front of everyone, finally prompting the "big talk" from his parents and an emergency superglue repair by his dad), seventh grade at Pine Hollow Middle School as a target of Robbie the supreme school bully and his pack of moronic toadies is rapidly becoming unbearable.

Cordelia Liu’s first year at Shadow School was a success. She studied hard and made friends. She also sent hundreds of ghosts into the afterlife, because Shadow School isn’t a normal school, and Cordelia Liu isn’t a normal girl. But her second year is already different. Ghosts are refusing to move on, the teachers are acting weird, and Cordelia’s best friends, Benji and Agnes, aren’t as interested in rescuing the ghosts as they used to be.

Spark is not your average teddy bear. She's soft and cuddly, sure, but she's also a fierce warrior. At night she fulfills her sacred duty: to protect the household from monsters. But Spark's owner Loretta is growing up and thinks she doesn't need her old teddy anymore. When a monster unlike any other descends on the quiet home, everything changes. Children are going missing, and the monster wants Loretta next. Only Spark can stop it. She must call upon the ancient League of Ursus - a secret alliance of teddy bears who are pledged to protect their human friends

Norton Juster - the acclaimed author of such children’s classics as The Phantom Toll Booth and The Hello, Goodbye Window - tells the story of a really rotten ogre. Huge and ugly, the angry ogre is always hungry - and utterly merciless. As he greedily gobbles up the people in his path, he seems unstoppable. And then one day, the ogre takes a wrong turn and encounters a kind and friendly young lady who does her best to help him.

What begins with a sense that Michael's deceased grandfather might be inhabiting his body soon escalates to "slipping" into to the river of the dead. When Michael slips, he relives moments of his grandfather's life and tries to help him find peace. But each time he ventures into the river it's harder to come out again. Michael will have to depend on an unlikely group of friends to keep him from slipping... permanently. A penetrating twist on the classic ghost story, full of humor and insight about family relationships.

Sam’s life has always been strange. After all, his family have no idea that he’s half monster, half fairy. But now he’s keeping an even bigger secret. He alone has the power to bring monsters to life! (He’s even got a tiny gargoyle hatchling hidden in his sock drawer.) When Queen Maggie finds out, she’s delighted. She wants Sam to create her a whole new legion of vile ogres. When he refuses, she vows that she will destroy everything Sam holds dear.