Scary Science Fiction

The rain hasn't stopped for a week, and the 12 guests of the Blue Vein Tavern are trapped by flooded roads and the rising Skidwrack River. Among them are a ship's captain, tattooed twins, a musician, and a young girl traveling on her own. To pass the time, they begin to tell stories - each a different type of folklore - that eventually reveal more about their own secrets than they intended. As the rain continues to pour down - an uncanny, unnatural amount of rain - the guests begin to realize that the entire city is in danger, and not just from the flood.

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?

Otherland is a dangerous magical underworld - a place where appearances can be deceiving and anything can happen. A world of gods, vampires and fairies. It’s also...horrible. When life-long friends Myra and Rohan discover that Rohan’s baby sister, Shilpa, has been stolen and taken to Otherland, the only way to rescue her is by taking part in a deadly game - three impossible challenges set by the Fairy Queen of Otherland. Win the game, and Rohan and Myra can go home with Shilpa - but lose, and they’ll be trapped in Otherland forever.

Jason Segel, multitalented actor, writer, and musician, teams up with New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Miller for the hilariously frightening middle-grade novel Nightmares!, the first book in a trilogy about a boy named Charlie and a group of kids who must face their fears to save their town. Sleeping has never been so scary. And now waking up is even worse! Charlie Laird has several problems.

A crackling fire. Weird shadows. Strange noises. And a scary story. Are Robot and Rico ready for their first campout?

Fed up with her wild behavior, 16-year-old Lex’s parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than shoveling manure. He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach Lex the family business. She quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next.

After a tumultuous first semester in seventh grade, Jed Rivers returns triumphant - or so he thinks. After embracing his undeadness to put his archenemy Robbie in his place, the 13-year-old zombie thought he'd have a much easier time surviving the second semester relatively intact. That was before he came across the antizombie propaganda published by the mysterious NZN Network, a group trying to push Hollywood stereotypes as the truth.

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!

Acclaimed author Jennifer Allison’s popular Gilda Joyce mysteries have been recognized with an Edgar Award nomination and starred reviews from School Library Journal and Booklist. In The Bones of the Holy, the 13-year-old psychic sleuth is in St. Augustine, Florida, to solve two truly puzzling mysteries: Why has her mother suddenly decided to marry an antiques dealer who looks like a walrus? And who is the woman in white haunting the man’s house?

Jack Miller has spent his entire nine years in the same house on the same street in the same town with the same best friend. One day, while delivering papers on his same ordinary paper route, Jack finds himself amidst a very unordinary world. A world where strange and silly monsters become his friends. In this story, Jack and Annabelle meet Orville, who will stop at nothing to keep the humans from returning to Monster World.

Jennifer Allison's best-selling Gilda Joyce series features a spunky heroine with a knack for hunting down the paranormal. When best friend Wendy Choy gets an invitation to compete in a piano competition in Oxford, England, Gilda Joyce manages to secure a position as Wendy's page turner. They will sip tea, flirt with English boys, and bask in the warm glow of applause. But when Wendy seems set to become the next victim of a local ghost, the Psychic Investigator goes to work.

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.

By some miracle and against all odds, Johnny and Maggie are given a second chance at life and love. But Johnny is freed from Purgatory only to find himself in a totally different time and place, in a world full of strangers. One unsolved mystery becomes another, and Johnny and Maggie must unravel the past to have any chance at a future. Prom Night in Purgatory is the sequel to the love story that is unlike any other, where time is shifting and everything can change, and Maggie must fight for Johnny all over again.

From R.L. Stine, the master of horror for young listeners, comes ten brand new stories that are sure to have you keeping the light on at bedtime tonight. A boy thinks that a dream factory will help him make his slumber more fun...but what's the line between dream and nightmare? Two kids find an abandoned shack on the side of the road and are determined to make it their new treehouse... but is it as abandoned as it seems? A boy wants to impress a birthday party with this amateur magician skills...but how far will he go to wow the crowd?

For Rebecca Chin, babysitting has always been fun. But one night, a thunderstorm knocks the power out while she’s watching baby Kyle, and creepy things begin to happen in the house. A locked window opens by itself, mossy handprints streak the wall, and the baby begins acting strange. When she finds out that no one else in town was affected by the storm, Rebecca begins to wonder if something supernatural is going on. Fellow sitters Tanya, Clio, and Maggie help Rebecca unravel the mystery, only to discover something unbelievable.

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?

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?

In Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault, Fernie and Gustav find themselves battling another shadowy foe - The Shadow Eater. He is after one thing, The Nightmare Vault, which his master, the evil Lord Obsidian, will use to unleash the most terrifying and threatening shadows into the world. As Fernie and Gustav race to stop the Shadow Eater, Fernie learns about Gustav's mysterious past and just what happened to his missing parents.

Buddy wakes up in the middle of a garbage dump, filled with a certain awareness: he’s a teddy bear; he spent time at a Store waiting for his future to begin; and he is meant for the loving arms of a child. Now he knows one more thing: Something has gone terribly wrong. Soon he finds other discarded teddies - Horace, Sugar, Sunny, and Reginald. Though they aren’t sure how their luck soured, they all agree that they need to get back to the Store if they’re ever to fulfill their destinies.

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