Scary Science Fiction

SKIN - An anthology of dark fiction. A collection of stories from some of the best up-and-coming authors of horror.

The Spook and his apprentice, Thomas Ward, have returned to the county after a long journey and a hard battle. But their troubles are far from over. Their home has been over-run by enemy soldiers. The Spook's house is in ruins, the boggart protecting it has fled, and the malicious witches imprisoned in the gardens have escaped. Tom, Alice, and the Spook must flee, too, across the ocean to the island of Mona. And it's on Mona that this small band fighting against the dark will face an old enemy grown terrifyingly powerful.

Something is terrorizing the villages of the county. People are dying - covered in blood, their faces frozen in fear. But with not a wound on their bodies. Battling creatures of the dark is the job of the local spook, but 17-year-old Thomas Ward never finished his apprenticeship. It will be no easy task to earn the trust of the villagers and to defeat a monster that no one has ever seen. Yet Jenny - a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter - knows an awful lot about this new evil. And she's willing to share what she's learned with Tom…if he takes her on as his apprentice.

The castle looms dark against the light of the moon. Giant ravens circle in the sky. The wind whistles through the empty windows. Merlin the magician needs someone to find out what has happened. But who is brave enough to brush the cobwebs aside and go through the heavy doors? Who is smart enough to solve the mystery of how the castle became haunted and return it to its rightful owners? Merlin thinks he knows the answer to these questions.

There is something weird happening in Fever Swamp. Something really horrible. It started with the strange howling at night. Then there was the rabbit torn to shreds. Everyone thinks Grady's new dog is responsible. After all, he looks just like a wolf. And he seems a little on the wild side. But Grady knows his dog is just a regular old dog. And most dogs don't howl at the moon. Or disappear at midnight. Or change into terrifying creatures when the moon is full. Or do they?

The dark is full of terrifying creatures. And Tom Ward - the seventh son of a seventh son, and the Spook's last apprentice - hasn't seen all of them. Far from the county, one named Slither has lived for hundreds of years, hunting blood. But a dying father binds the monster to a bargain. If Slither will take his two youngest daughters safely to their family in the south, then the eldest daughter, Nessa, is his.

A gate has been opened. The Old Ones have been released. And now the third and fourth of The Five -- twins with a mysterious psychic bond -- are joining the fight....Hailed "a master of edge-of-your-seat writing" by Booklist, Anthony Horowitz pens the New York Times best-selling Gatekeepers series, With Nightrise, he amplifies the suspense as an evil group strives to imprison and control the psychic twins, Scott and Jamie.

This house is keeping secrets...When 11-year-old Olive and her parents move into the crumbling mansion on Linden Street and find it filled with mysterious paintings, Olive knows the place is creepy - but it isn’t until she encounters its three talking cats that she realizes there’s something darkly magical afoot. Then Olive finds a pair of antique spectacles in a dusty drawer and discovers the most peculiar thing yet: She can travel inside the house’s spooky paintings to a world that’s strangely quiet...and eerily sinister.

Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, this hair-raising holiday collection includes 15 original tales - including an original Sookie Stackhouse story.

In the Clandoms, everyone is born with wings, though not all the clans are treated equally. Ellie Meadows longed to become a Goldwing—the knights who protect the people -- but because she came from the humble Sparrow Clan, her dream faced almost insurmountable resistance. Nox Hatcher has it even worse. Nox is a Crow, a shattered clan. They can't own businesses or run organizations, all due to a mistake made hundreds of years ago. Nox has had to steal and scrape just to survive, but a single goal has kept him going, even when it felt like all the Clandoms were against him.

Featuring stories from R.L. Stine and Madeleine Roux, this middle-grade horror anthology, curated by New York Times best-selling author and master of macabre Jonathan Maberry, is a chilling tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Flesh-hungry ogres? Brains full of spiders? Haunted houses you can’t escape? This collection of 35 terrifying stories from the Horror Writers Association has it all, including ghastly illustrations from Iris Compiet that will absolutely chill listeners to the bone.

Jack Miller has spent his entire nine years in the same house on the same street in the same town with the same best friend. One day, while delivering papers on his same ordinary paper route, Jack finds himself amidst a very unordinary world. A world where strange and silly monsters become his friends.In the final installment of "Jack's Big Secret" find out if Jack and Annabelle finally find and save Bellion.

Risk-averse Greg Belmont is content with being ordinary. He's got a friend - that's right, just one - at his fancy prep school, and a pretty cool dad (even if he is obsessed with organic soaps that smell like a mix of salted pork and Icelandic bog). The problem is, Greg isn't ordinary... he's actually a fantastical Dwarf! He discovers the truth the day his dad brings home a gross new tea - one that awakens bizarre abilities in Greg. Then a murderous Bro-Troll kidnaps his dad and Greg is whisked away to the Underground, where Dwarves have lived for centuries right beneath Chicago.

Claire has absolutely no interest in the paranormal. She's a scientist, which is why she can't think of anything worse than having to help out her dad on one of his ghost-themed Chicago bus tours. She thinks she's made it through when she sees a boy with a sad face and dark eyes at the back of the bus. There's something off about his presence, especially because when she checks at the end of the tour...he's gone.

In the small town of Griever's Mill, 11-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in. Old Man Crandall is the first to change - human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky, and at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it.

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.

Esther Gold loves Halloween more than anything in the world. So she is determined to go trick-or-treating again this year despite the fact that her parents think she is officially too old. Esther has it all planned out, from her costume to her candy-collecting strategy. But when the night rolls around, something feels...off. No one is answering their door. The moon is an unnatural shade of orange. Strange children wander the streets, wearing creepy costumes that might not be costumes at all.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Beast Awakens by Joseph Delaney, read by Lee Ingleby. They heard shouting and cries of fear. Crafty looked down the slope and realised what had happened to cause so much panic. Without warning, the dark wall of the Shole had advanced. Crafty can't remember a time before the Shole - the terrifying mist that has engulfed most of Britain, leaving those trapped in it to either die or be transformed into horrifying monsters: the aberrations.

In this collection of spine-chilling tales, a doll comes to life and haunts a little girl, a young writer only has one hundred words to let others know about an approaching danger, and a boy is trapped in an underground bunker with spooky people who have been missing for years and years.

It's been two years since Emily and Jess Volnik visited ancient Castle Keep in Scotland and made the acquaintance of the Boggart, a mischievous shape-shifting spirit who has lived in the castle for centuries. Now they've returned for another Scottish adventure, joining their old friend Tommy and Mr. Maconochie, the new owner of Castle keep, on a trip to Loch Ness, where a new expedition is determined to find the fabled monster. Of course, the fun-loving Boggart comes along for the ride, and wherever the Boggart goes, things are bound to get lively. But this time the Boggart has a serious mission....