Scary Suspense

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

If you're looking for the scariest stories you can get your hands on, your search is over. Accomplished storyteller Roberta Simpson Brown unfolds her thrilling stories for listeners of all ages.

These shivery tales were collected from the oral tradition, from people all over the Southwest, and represent the rich cultural diversity of the region, from the Ozarks to the Rio Grande, California to the Big Thicket.

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.

Their radio is sabotaged. The wolves are gathering outside. And for the increasingly desperate mercenaries, the worst is yet to come in chapter three of The Boy in the Iron Box: the box is empty. In the wake of an inexplicable disappearance, Liev and his men use their tactical skills to last the night—by going hunting. Following a small, bare footprint in the snow leads only to the realization that someone, or something, is hunting them.

Noah and Violet, treasure hunters and protectors of the Overworld, are back in this fifth installment of the League of Griefers series. When skeletons corner Noah and Violet, the duo escapes through a portal to the Nether. Trouble brews as Noah accidently leaves the portal open, and the mobs from the Overworld enter the Nether. Noah and Violet must battle hostile mobs from both worlds to survive. Taking shelter in a Nether Fortress, they befriend treasure hunters who help them battle the mobs.

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?

Fifteen-year-old Ryan is running away from home, looking for escape and adventure. But unfortunately, sometimes people do get what they wish for. Ryan hasn’t gone far before he is set upon by a bunch of scary, nihilistic punk-sorcerers who need him to set off a doomsday device that will destroy the planet and everyone on it. Fun! Riding to the rescue, however, is a certain skeleton detective and his teenage partner/combat accessory. Now Skulduggery and Valkyrie only have a few hours to figure out what's going on, while saving Ryan and – incidentally – the whole world.

The time has come for Adam and his friends to again face Spooksville’s most powerful citizen, Ms. Ann Templeton. Sally says the woman is definitely a witch, but Adam and Watch are not so certain. To find the truth, they visit her castle together. There they find both good and bad: creatures more horrible than anything they could imagine, but also magical tools that can create the most wonderful things. But will these tools help Adam and his friends? Or are they just instruments to trick them and make them slaves of the mysterious Ann Templeton?

Anna and Peter desperately need to escape London for a fresh start. And they’ve found just the place: a perfect house on a perfect street in a perfect new development on the Scottish coast. But before they’ve even unpacked, they discover that the community they’ve moved into might be keeping secrets of its own…

All of a sudden, the most ordinary things have taken on a sinister edge: a penny on a doormat. An odd man in a brown suit under a streetlamp. The persistent sound of an ax chopping in the middle of the night. He keeps telling himself that this is Seaham, a sleepy seaside town where nothing ever happens. Or at least nothing did, until his dad’s construction company opened up the cliff beneath the old—some say cursed—Langdon place.

What has been awakened is unbound. The Boy is getting his first taste of freedom. As their comrades fall, fear threatens to consume the survivors in chapter four of The Boy in the Iron Box. Liev’s plan: get his men out of this ancient stone prison, take their chances with the wolves, and descend the summit at first light. But in this snowbound hell, there’s soon to be a frightening new twist to survival.

The mercenaries set an explosive scheme in motion to blow this bad dream to smithereens. But in chapter five of The Boy in the Iron Box, they soon find that even the best-laid plans can backfire. With the morale of the team fraying, Liev makes a vow. He’s not going to leave anyone behind until the last stand is seen through to its cold and bitter end. On this night, it’s Liev who lies in wait to face everything he’s feared. It’s nothing like he expected.

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now armed with his father's mysterious and deadly atheme, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay. Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage.

It's Halloween and RJ has come to spend the night with Rebekah and Mouse. What starts out as a quiet night in with scary movies and snacks turns into a visit to one of the scariest haunted houses that the gang has ever encountered. Will they be the only kids to not run away in fear? Or will they have the courage to open the door to the one place that none of their other friends dared to enter?

The offspring of the four families have barely managed to escape the Bell Witch’s deadly harvest. Exhausted, terrified, and haunted by their families’ twisted secrets, they know that death still awaits in the woods. Unless they can work together, and end the curse once and for all. Determined to free their families from the witch’s game, the young survivors return to the mist-shrouded forests of Black River, Tennessee. But they soon realize they are not alone. Something is watching, stalking them through the gnarled trees.

In the ravaged future, children are disappearing. Riley lives safely behind her perimeter fence, but soon she'll have to confront the terrible truth of what's happening outside. An old enemy is approaching. Threatening to extinguish her way of life. To save herself, Riley must fight to save another. She must put herself in the last place she ever wanted to be.

A boy with strange powers purchases an antique toy and finds himself pulled into an old family grudge. The carved wood frame of an old bassinet cages a mischievous, evil entity. And the ghost of a young girl reveals a sinister experiment in a crumbling old house....

Aaron Peterson feels like he's trapped in a recurring nightmare. After moving halfway across the world to flee his father's latest theme park failure, yet another disaster has occurred: A roller coaster car jumps the tracks at the Golden Apple Amusement Park, resulting in the death of his friend, Lucy Yi.

Karen DeSonne is used to pretending to be something she's not. All her life, she's passed as a normal all-American teenager; with her friends, with her family, and at school. Passing cost her the love of her life. And now that Karen's dead, she's still passing - this time, as alive. Meanwhile, Karen's dead friends have been fingered in a high-profile murder, causing a new round of anti-zombie regulations that have forced nearly all of Oakvale's undead into hiding.