Teen Horror Fiction

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised. But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended.

Chuck Warren died tragically at the old abandoned mill, but Paz Espino knows it was no accident—there's a monster under the town, and she's determined to kill it before anyone else gets hurt. She'll need the help of her crew—inseparable friends, bound by a childhood pact stronger than diamonds, distance or death—to hunt it down. But she's up against a greater force of evil than she ever could have imagined.

A cemetery full of the restless dead. A town so wicked it has already burned twice, with the breath of the third fire looming. A rural, isolated bridge with a terrifying monster waiting for the completion of its summoning ritual. A lake that allows the drowned to return, though they have been changed by the claws of death. These are the shadowed, liminal spaces where the curses and monsters lurk, refusing to be forgotten.

Ever since an accident turned her into a knockout vamp, Elvi Black's been catching her z's in a coffin, staying out of the sun, and giving up garlic. She knows there's more to being undead than what she saw in Dracula, but she can't very well ask her mortal friends about proper biting etiquette. But when her neighbors placed a personal ad for her in the local paper, she never imagined she'd meet Victor Argeneau, a vampire who could have his pick of any woman - dead or alive.

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.

Girls are dying in mysterious circumstances.... They are found dead in their beds, covered in blood, with a look of pure horror on their faces. Worse still, their ghosts are left to walk the Earth, just waiting for someone to hear the terror that has befallen them. Thomas Ward is the local spook - it’s his job to protect the county from things that go bump in the night. But this is no ordinary haunting, and he finds himself on the path of a dangerous beast that is looking to kill again.

Penny knows she must forget about her ex, Nash. Ever since his father was revealed as the brutal serial killer who traumatized their small town last Halloween, Penny’s parents have forbidden her to have anything to do with Nash or his family. It’s hard not to think of him—but she’s trying.

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 Amy sees a dog stranded on the side of the highway, she knows what she has to do. She tells her dad to stop the car. She can't understand why anyone would abandon a dog in such a way, tied up and blindfolded. Amy's parents say they'll only keep the dog until they can find it a permanent home. Amy's younger sister names the dog Rover.

After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boardinghouse. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.

Former teachers Richard and Judy Dockrey Young bring their frightening performances alive on audio with 14 ghost stories from the American Southwest.

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.

Scary stories help children face fear and master it, by portraying the elements of conflict in clear, good-versus-evil terms with good triumphant in the end.

Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious. Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent's king-making; he’s just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper's son, Everett Everley.

In this collection of 13 fabulously chilling stories from 13 true masters of suspense, including five New York Times best sellers and a number of Edgar Award nominees, all edited by none other than R. L. Stine, nothing is what it seems. From cannibalistic children, to an unwitting date with a vampire, to a crush on a boy who just might be a werewolf, no scary stone is left unturned. A must-have for all fans of the genre!

In 1982, two teenagers - serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell - are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases. From the start, Emma and Travis develop a quick friendship, gaining information from juvenile murderers that even the FBI can't crack. But when the team is called in to give advice on an active case - a serial killer who exclusively hunts teenagers - things begin to unravel.

When 15-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in Barcelona, no one knows his whereabouts for seven days and seven nights. His story begins when he meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of the city. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly 10 o'clock in the morning, a woman shrouded in a black velvet cloak descends from her carriage to place a single rose on an unmarked grave.

Ivy and Iris haven’t lived together for years—when their mother and father divorced, each parent got custody of one twin. But after a tragic accident takes their mom’s life, the devastated sisters are reunited, and Iris moves in with Ivy and their dad. Iris takes their mom’s death especially hard. She barely talks, spending hours alone in her room. Ivy can’t stand to see Iris so sad. She promised Iris that she can share her life now. After all, they’re sisters. Twins.

Dearie and Cole are inseparable, unlikeable, and (in bad luck for them) totally unbelievable. From the day they met, Dearie and Cole have been two against the world. But whenever something bad happens at Stone Grove High School, they get blamed. Why? They’re beautiful, flirtatious, dangerously clever queen bees, and they’re always ready to call out their fellow students. But they’ve never faced a bigger threat than surviving senior year, when Mr. Sandman, a famous, never-caught serial killer emerges from a long retirement—and his hunting ground is their school Queer Club.

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.