Scary Stories For Adults

Amy's ventriloquist dummy, Dennis, has lost his head...for real. So Amy begs her family for a new dummy. That's when her dad finds Slappy in a local pawnshop. Slappy's kind of ugly, but at least his head stays on! Amy loves practicing her new comedy routine. It's like this dummy knows what she's thinking. Like he can move by himself. And it's a lot of fun...until Slappy starts a routine of his own. A nasty, horrible routine that isn't funny at all. Slappy may have a new owner, but he's up to the same old tricks....

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.

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.

Twelve-year-old Emma is excited to spend a weekend away at best friend Samantha's house for an epic sleepover with Sam and her out-of-town cousins. But things take a turn for the spooky when Emma's peculiar new book, Tales from the Scaremaster, shows it has a mind of its own - and weaves a story starring Emma and some cousins hiding a very creepy secret!

After discovering that vampires populate her town, college student Claire Danvers knows that the undead just want to live their lives. But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble. There's a new extreme sport getting picked up on the Internet: bare-knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against each other - or humans. Tracking the remote signal leads Claire - accompanied by her friends and "frenemies" - to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville.

For an athlete like Matt Daniels, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It's also the most dangerous. That's because somebody is about to pull a mean prank. The recipe is simple: Just add Monster Blood. As if Matt's problems weren't big and slimy enough, a surprise invitation will lead to even more trouble. How long can Matt survive inside a terrifying theme park? Not very long if his friends keep disappearing!

In one of the last cities standing after the world fell to monsters, best friends Zed Kagari and Brock Dunderfel have high hopes for the future. Zed desperately wishes to join the ranks of the Mages Guild, where his status as Freestone's only half-elf might finally be an asset. Brock, the roguishly handsome son of merchants, is confident he'll be welcomed into the ranks of the Merchants Guild. But just as it seems the boys' dreams have come true, their lives take a startling turn...and they find themselves members of the perilous Adventurers Guild.

Vampire Michael Glass just received the call he's been waiting for all his life. His music has attracted the attention of a heavily connected music producer who wants him to cut a demo and play some dates---which means that Michael will have to enter the human world. But he won't be alone. He's been assigned an undead escort, which includes immortal enforcer Oliver, as well as Michael's human friends: rebellious Eve, oft-misunderstood Claire, and courageous Shane.

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.

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans have coexisted in bloodless harmony until the arrival of Bishop, a master vampire who threatens to put the evil back in evil undead and smash the fragile peace. But Bishop isn't the only threat.

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans have learned to live in relative peace. Still, students like Claire Danvers know that after dark, studying can take a backseat to staying alive. But the tenuous good-neighbor policy is really turned on its head with the arrival of Mr. Bishop. Bad to the bone, the ancient old-school vampire cares nothing about harmony.

After the events at Llethanyl, city of the elves, Zed is cut off from his friends - unable to warn them about a dangerous enemy on the move. And their recent heroism in defeating the evil that cast the elves from their home doesn’t keep the Adventurers Guild in the Freestoners’ good graces for long.

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.

Achim is 11 years old when he moves from the orphanage to the house by the sea. Here everything is strange and new. But one day he discovers an unusual door that leads to a circular room with walls made of rough stone. The light coming through the window is hazy, as if the room is under water. It is a magic room - which he calls “The Adopted Room” - belonging to another world. And on a bed in the room sits a boy who is waiting to take Achim with him into the realm of the powerful Nameless One.

Drifting in the dark waters of a mysterious river, the only thing Amelia knows for sure is that she's dead. With no recollection of her past life - or her actual death - she's trapped alone in a nightmarish existence. All of this changes when she tries to rescue a boy, Joshua, from drowning in her river. As a ghost, she can do nothing but will him to live. Yet in an unforgettable moment of connection, she helps him survive.

Zed, Brock, and their friends may have saved Freestone from destruction, but the fight against the Dangers is far from over. No one knows what to expect next from the dark power that forced the elves to abandon their city. And the influx of elf refugees in Freestone strains resources and brews resentment among the townspeople. Things have shifted between best friends Zed and Brock, as well, with their friendship crumbling under the weight of the secrets they're keeping from each other.

All Goff wanted was for his essay on witchcraft to be good enough to win a scholarship to a private academy far away from Spraksville, the miserable, spooky little town he is stuck in. But, if he'd known that Spraksville's history of witchcraft was more than just folklore, he never would have experimented with casting a spell in the cemetery at midnight as research to make the essay great.

Alex’s original hair-raising tales are the only thing keeping the witch Natacha happy, but soon he’ll run out of pages to read from and be trapped forever. He’s loved scary stories his whole life, and he knows most don’t have a happily ever after. Now that Alex is trapped in a true terrifying tale, he’s desperate for a different ending - and a way out of this twisted place. This modern spin on the Scheherazade story is perfect for fans of Coraline and A Tale Dark and Grimm.

Jules' family moves into an old abandoned house. Her parents love it, but she's frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, she can't stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor - in a room with a locked door. Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules becomes determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and to unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago.

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire. Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening.