Teen Horror Fiction

After the sudden death of her perfect, popular older sister, Jo and her family feel empty. But days after crying at Audrey’s graveside, Jo stumbles on the impossible: Audrey, standing barefoot in the snowy backyard. But Audrey isn’t breathing. She’s decaying. And worst of all, she’s hungry, and only human blood can curb her relentless appetite.

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.

Inez is missing, but missing things can always be found. Mae knows this as fact, even though the police investigation has come to a standstill, even though her parents are moving on. But when she goes to clear out her older sister’s studio, Mae finds a mess of research and an old white canvas set in an ornate gold frame. The closer Mae gets to the canvas, the more difficult it becomes to pull her eyes away from its mottled surface. Its heavy layer of white paint. The peeling top corner she’s tempted to pull to see what’s beneath. But she doesn’t. Not yet.

Everybody loves scary stories, and nobody loves them more than children. Storytellers Richard and Judy Dockery Young gathered these stories from the most discerning of critics: the children themselves. These are the tales kids tell most often and most often ask to be told.

The room is watching. But Mira and Layla don't know this yet. When the two best friends are stranded on their spring break college tour road trip, they find themselves at the Wildwood Motel, located in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. Mira can't shake the feeling that there is something wrong and rotten about their room. Inside, she's haunted by nightmares of her dead brother. When she wakes up, he's still there.

Follow the desperate journey of a scientist who will stop at nothing to save the woman he loves from a disease that is slowly consuming her body. But his actions have unintended consequences that plunge the world into a bloody and chaotic apocalypse, where the living are outnumbered by the ravenous, superhuman zombies that roam the streets.

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....

Sophie Cavanaugh is not going to let her freak of a cousin's strange psychiatric condition ruin high school for them both. Not after all the work she's put into cultivating the right look and friends and reputation. But then Sophie sees something so frightening she lets out a blood-curdling scream - and finds herself stuck in a bizarre parallel world where nothing is safe and deadly creatures lurk just out of sight, waiting for her to close her eyes and sleep...forever. Could this world be real?

Dan, Abby, and Jordan remain traumatized by the summer they shared in the Brookline asylum. Much as they'd love to move on, someone is determined to keep the terror alive, sending the teens photos of an old-timey carnival, with no note and no name. Finally, Dan receives a list of coordinates pointing to abandoned houses in the town near Brookline, and he is convinced that the only way to end this nightmare once and for all is to return to New Hampshire College and follow the trail.

Determined to find her mother when she disappears, Ash follows her to Quivara, Kansas, the spiritual commune she escaped long ago. But something sinister and ancient waits among the rustling cornstalks of this village lost to time. Her mother is nowhere to be found, but Ash is plagued by memories of her ancestor, Katia, which harken back to the town's history of unrequited love, murder, alchemy, and immortality. Charming traditions give way to a string of deaths. And Ash feels herself drawn to Dane, a mysterious, forbidden boy with secrets of his own.

Liv Fleming's father went missing more than two years ago, not long after he claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Liv has long accepted that he's dead, though that doesn't mean she has given up their traditions. Every Sunday, she and her lifelong friend Doug Monk trudge through the woods to check the traps Lee left behind, traps he set to catch the aliens he so desperately believed were after him.

When Vicky becomes the target of a serial arsonist plaguing the city, Darien calls on the supernatural community to help. Pulling the creatures of the night together to cooperate on any project is troublesome at the best of times. The fact that the one responsible for the city's woes is a being of fire and magic leads the reluctant groups to a truce that makes Vicky start to think that her job might be a bit more than one normal human can handle.

Just before summer begins, 13-year-old Ali finds an old photograph. She recognizes the two children in it; one’s her mother, the other her aunt Dulcie - but who is the third person, the one who’s been torn out of the picture? Ali will have two months to figure it out, since she’s spending the summer with her aunt and her cousin in the same house her mom and aunt used to visit when they were kids. Then Ali meets Sissy. Sissy is mean, spiteful, and determined to ruin Ali’s summer. Sissy also has a secret. Could it have something to do with the old photo? Ali is dying to find out - though, if she’s not careful, that may be exactly what happens to her.

It’s time for Joss McMillan to prove himself as a Slayer. He failed to kill the vampire Vladimir Tod, but now he’s getting a second chance to make things right. He is in New York City, sent by the Slayer Society to hunt down a serial-killing vampire. Joss will lead his Slayer team and stop the murderer. But all is not as it appears. When the team discovers that there is more than one suspect on the killing rampage, Joss must use all his skill to save the innocent people of New York City. Joss’s status as a Slayer - and his very life - depend on it.

In the final book of The Slayer Chronicles trilogy, Slayer Joss McMillan is home in Santa Clara when he’s assigned to track down and take out a murderous vampire. But vampires aren’t Joss’s only trouble this summer: His girl-crazy cousin Henry is staying with him, and still holding a grudge against Joss for trying to kill his best friend, Vladimir Tod. Joss’s former mentor and supposedly dead vampire, Sirus, is casting a shadow on Joss’s every move. And Kat, Joss’s old friend, has come back to exact revenge for past wrongs.

Joss McMillan’s perfect life crashes down the night he witnesses his sister’s murder - at the hands of a vampire. He then finds out his family’s secret heritage: They are part of the Slayer Society, a group whose mission is to rid the world of vampires. Joss is their new recruit. As Joss trains, bent on seeking revenge for his sister, he discovers powers that could make him the youngest, strongest Slayer in history. But there is a traitor in the Society, one whose identity would shake Joss to the core... if the traitor doesn’t kill him first.

Mara Todd wakes in a field of dead grass, a heavy mist pressing down on her. She is terrified, afraid that she is dead. She can't remember who she is or anything about her past. Is it because of the boy who appears? He calls himself the Messenger of Fear. If the world does not bring justice to those who do evil, the Messenger will. He offers the wicked a game. If they win, they go free. If they lose, they will live their greatest fear. Either way, their sanity will be challenged.

After Renee Winters discovers her parents dead, her grandfather sends her off to Gottfried Academy in Maine. It’s here she meets Dante, to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they get to know each other better, Dante can’t seem to control his attraction either, and they being a complex and dangerous romance. Dangerous because Dante is hiding a frightening secret.

The team has to come to grips with a killer being allowed to live. The alien has to deal with the threat of paperwork. Will this effort to allow Juntto to redeem himself work? Or will Katie need to figure out how to kill him for good, when even the angels from above could only place him on ice before? Juntto is used to getting his way, but has he met his match with Angie? He wants to be Emperor of his own country. How can she convince him being an Emperor isn’t all it is cracked up to be? Pandora doesn’t play by the rules, nor will Katie.

Thrown into solitary confinement for his failed escape attempt from furnace prison, Alex Sawyer struggles not to let the hellish pitch-black silence overwhelm him. Before another escape attempt is even possible, he must first survive the nightmare that now haunts his endless nights. Because the hole doesn’t need monsters to do its dirty work — not the usual brutes in black suits and their silver-eyed, fleshless hounds, or wheezing freaks with filthy syringes.