Scary Stories For Adults

Fourteen-year-old Susan Backstrom seems to have a charmed life - she's smart and beautiful, the only child of wealthy, attentive parents. But there are secrets inside her expensive house that Susan would never tell. One day, at the library, she overhears their housekeeper's son talking with some friends about sneaking into a nearby abandoned house. Much to her own surprise, Susan very much wants to join them - and soon, she's part of the best secret of all. The house has a resident teenage ghost. More important than that, the house itself is a living, supernatural thing.

It's the most wonderful time of year...or is it? Christmas Eve is a night of mystery and magic, but not always in ways we expect. Things lurk in the shadows, and they're not the least bit jolly or merry. Let's just say some presents are better left unopened. 'Tis the season to be screaming along with our 13 tales of holiday horrors. Ghosts. Monsters. Demons. And more! This Christmas, be careful what you wish for....

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.

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.

From the author of the Chicagoland Vampires novels, a new series about a boarding school filled with something worse than homework. Lily's parents have sent her to a fancy boarding school in Chicago filled with the ultra-rich. If that wasn't bad enough, she's hearing and seeing bizarre things on St. Sophie's creepy campus. Her roommate, Scout, keeps her sane, but keeps disappearing at night. When one day Lily finds Scout running from real-life monsters, she learns the hard way that Scout is involved in a splinter group of rebel teens.They protect Chicago from demons, vamps, and dark magic users....

Ian was the one who chased the majestic buck into the forest. (His motto: act first, think later.) Kendra didn't want to become separated from the other sixth graders, but she followed Ian anyway, despite what her analytical mind told her. PJ followed him too. Even though he was scared, he figured he might catch some amazing footage with his video camera. They all hoped to return to the hiking trail before anyone noticed they were gone. However, the mountain had other plans for them: dark, sinister plans that only nightmares are made of.

Every October, Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season - when Cara; her ex-stepbrother, Sam; and her best friend, Bea, are 17 - is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think.

Diana and her little brother Georgie have been living in the woods behind the old Willis place, a decaying Victorian mansion, for what already seems like forever. They aren't allowed to leave the property or show themselves to anyone. But when a new caretaker comes to live there with his young daughter, Lissa, Diana is tempted to break the mysterious rules they live by and reveal herself so she can finally have a friend.

Tessa Woodward isn't exactly thrilled to move to rainy, cold Chicago from her home in sunny Florida. But homesickness turns to icy fear when unexplainable things start happening in her new house. Things like flickering lights, mysterious drawings appearing out of nowhere, and a crackling noise she can feel in her bones. When her little brother's doll starts crying real tears, Tessa realizes that someone - or something - is trying to communicate with her. And it involves a secret that's been shrouded in mystery for more than 100 years.

Everyone thinks that Clark is too old to still play with stuffed animals. He's almost 11! Bullies target him at school while his mother tries increasingly un-subtle ways to wean him off his toys and introduce more "normal" interests. But Clark can't shake the feeling that his stuffed friends are important, even necessary. Sometimes they move around in the night and sometimes in the morning they look a little worse for wear, as if they've engaged in battle. And it turns out...he's right.

Fans of Adam Gidwitz and Neil Gaiman will love this middle-grade adventure about two boys, a mysterious, old book with some dark secrets, and a horde of angry demons. Nothing could go wrong, right? When Walter Prairie is struck dead by a bolt of lightning, he's fast-tracked through the Afterlife Academy and assigned as a Guardian Agent to protect a High-Level Target. Walter's HLT, Charlie Dewdle, isn't the most popular kid in school. He's a bit paranormally obsessed. And he has just found an old book that could be used to open the Gateway for demons to wreak havoc on earth.

When high school buddies Larry Drayfus and Dan Cotwell take a backpacking trip into the Mogollon Mountains, nobody is concerned when they don’t come home exactly on time. Dan is a natural outdoorsman, and he knows the mountains well. Larry is smart and resourceful. But soon the boys’ families must accept the unthinkable, as little sign of them can be found in the hills.

Ghostgirl features Charlotte Usher, a high-schooler who can't help but feel no one knows she's alive. Then her nagging fear is confirmed. One day she no longer just feels invisible - she is, in fact, dead and literally haunting the halls.

Riley’s finding that the afterlife can be a lonely place when all you do is focus on work. So she goes to the place where dreams happen, hoping to find a way to contact her sister, Ever. She meets the director, who tells her about the two ways to send dreams. As a Dream Jumper, a person can jump into a dreamer’s dream, share a message, and participate. As a Dreamweaver, an entire dream can be created in a studio and sent to the dreamer.

A town is overrun by road weenies - a.k.a. joggers - who never smile. A girl thinks she's too old for Halloween...until she finds a special pair of gloves. A boy takes a shortcut to an unexpected place. A mummy takes his revenge, one little piece at a time.... These 35 tales ranging from the silly and offbeat to flat-out horrifying are just right for listening alone in the dark.

Time is running out for the star crossed lovers, the teenagers thrown together by fate who were supposed to be trying to kill each other. The undead infection is spreading in Scarlet, slowly worming its way through her body. As they race across the wastelands to the last outpost with advanced medical facilities, their fathers go to war. The cult begins its advance on the free states headquarters and Casey's ruthless cannibals are gathering their forces for their own attack. No one gets to sit this one out. Everyone fights.

Jackson is always eager to visit his aunt Sarah at her anthropological digs. This time she's in England, at Stonehenge, and Jackson's particularly excited to see the massive and mysterious stone formations in person. But then he sees a young man viciously attacked and witnesses a similar savage attack on his beloved aunt Sarah. A beast no one has ever seen before is on the prowl and Jackson must rush to stop it before it can kill again. Can he solve the mystery of the inhuman monster that is stalking the countryside - before it's too late?

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.

There's a new boy at Shadyside High School, and he's stolen the hearts of all the girls. Good-looking, athletic Ross Gabriel is the kind of guy that every girl wants to date - including best friends Janie, Eve, and Faith. They've even made a bet on which one of them he'll go out with first. Ross dates a lot of girls - and one by one, they're all murdered. It looks like going out with Ross means flirting with a gruesome and horrifying fate.

Battling a wolf to save a little girl’s life makes Argus Brock a local hero. But what the small town of Redstone doesn’t know is that the tough teenager is a secretly a werewolf, which means the wolf Argus bit during the fight is now a werewolf, too. But unlike Argus and his wolf pack siblings, this wolf man is far from tame.