Scary Science Fiction

Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares. When Peace suddenly becomes afraid of the dark and refuses to sleep alone, their parents take him away for "treatment" on Duppy Island.

After barely surviving the onslaught of monsters that tried to kill him the day before his 14th birthday, Jack Templar leaves his hometown on a quest to rescue his father and discover the truth about his past. Joined by his friends Will and T-Rex, and led by Eva, the mysterious one-handed monster hunter, Jack sets out for the Monster Hunter Academy where he hopes to find answers to his questions. Little does he suspect that the Academy is filled with dangers of its own, many of them more terrifying than anything he's faced so far.

Twelve-year-old Octavia grew up believing the town of Vittoria was the only one left in the world. The sole survivors of a deadly magical war and plague, the people of Vittoria know there’s no one alive outside the town walls - except the terrible monsters that prowl the forest. But then the impossible happens: Octavia meets another girl beyond the walls, someone who isn’t Vittorian. Everything she’s ever believed is thrown into question, and there’s no going back.

In the absurd land of Nth, Thisby Thestoop can be found within the forlorn walls of Castle Grimstone, down the precarious steps of the Black Mountain dungeon, up to her nose in griffon toenails, gnoll spittle, and troll meat (to give to them, not made of them).

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporzsed my maths teacher. Now I spend my time battling monsters and generally trying to stay alive. This is the one where Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks I've stolen his lightning bolt - and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea.

Poppy, Dash, Azumi, and Dylan may have made it out of Shadow House - but the grounds are a whole new nightmare. Someone they thought was a friend is hunting them, and there's no place that's safe now that they've woken the shadow creature. If they want to survive, they'll have to figure out once and for all what the house wants from them, and what - or who - they'll need to leave behind in order to escape...or risk being trapped within Shadow House forever.

Jo, Melissa, and Jenny, the stars of the school play, are about to discover that being granted everything you wish for has consequences. When the girls come face-to-face with the real witches from the play and a mysterious ghost from the past, the three friends realize they must do whatever they can to stop the witches' evil plan.

Alice's world is falling apart. Her parents are getting a divorce, and they've cancelled their yearly cottage trip - the one thing that gets Alice through the school year. Instead, Alice and her mom are heading to some small town where Alice's mom will be a live-in nurse to a rich elderly lady. The house is huge, imposing, and spooky, and everything inside is meticulously kept and perfect - not a fun place to spend the summer. Things start to get weird when Alice finds a dollhouse in the attic that's an exact replica of the house she's living in.

On Marin’s island, sunrise doesn’t come every 24 hours - it comes every 28 years. Now the Sun is just a sliver of light on the horizon. The weather is turning cold and the shadows are growing long. Because sunset triggers the tide to roll out hundreds of miles, the islanders are frantically preparing to sail south, where they will wait out the long night. Marin and her twin brother, Kana, help their anxious parents ready the house for departure. Locks must be taken off doors. Furniture must be arranged. Tables must be set. The rituals are puzzling - bizarre, even.

Thirteen-year-old Falcon Quinn and his neighbors, Max and Megan, board bus number 13 for school on an ordinary day in Cold River, Maine. Only the bus doesn't take its ordinary route, and Falcon and his friends soon find themselves in an extraordinary place on Shadow Island, at the Academy for Monsters. With a student body stranger than the cast of any monster movie Falcon has ever seen, the academy is home to creatures and oddities of all kinds.

Ghoulia lives in Crumbling Manor with her Auntie Departed and spends most of her time playing with Tragedy, her beloved albino greyhound. But things aren't as easy as they seem for this little zombie girl - all she wants is a real friend. She tries to venture past the manor's walls, but she can't hide her pale green skin or the deep purple circles under her eyes. The other children will be afraid of her, and no one will want to be her friend. But when Halloween rolls around, Ghoulia hatches a brilliant plan.

Clark can’t wait to go away to camp this year. For the first time ever, he has actual friends to hang out with. Catherine-Lucille and D. A. will both be at Camp I Can with Clark, and C. L. has already promised to induct him into her exclusive camp club - the one for campers who know everything there is to know about the world of Monsters and how Stuffies protect kids from them. And now that he knows (or suspects...very strongly) that his grandma-made Stuffy, Foon, heroically saved his own father from a horrible fate, Clark is obviously bringing Foon to camp along with him.

After a series of mysterious accidents on the Davies' family farm, the farmer's son, David, begins to investigate what could be causing the mysterious and unsettling occurrences. The terrifying secrets he uncovers threaten his family's safety and expose the truth about the family's farm.

Fans of Adam Gidwitz and Neil Gaiman will love this middle-grade adventure about two boys, a mysterious, old book with some dark secrets, and a horde of angry demons. Nothing could go wrong, right? When Walter Prairie is struck dead by a bolt of lightning, he's fast-tracked through the Afterlife Academy and assigned as a Guardian Agent to protect a High-Level Target. Walter's HLT, Charlie Dewdle, isn't the most popular kid in school. He's a bit paranormally obsessed. And he has just found an old book that could be used to open the Gateway for demons to wreak havoc on earth.

Cordelia Liu’s first year at Shadow School was a success. She studied hard and made friends. She also sent hundreds of ghosts into the afterlife, because Shadow School isn’t a normal school, and Cordelia Liu isn’t a normal girl. But her second year is already different. Ghosts are refusing to move on, the teachers are acting weird, and Cordelia’s best friends, Benji and Agnes, aren’t as interested in rescuing the ghosts as they used to be.

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.

In the days of the Salem witch trials, the sleepy hamlet of Duston Heights had just one practitioner of the dark arts: the notorious necromancer Esdrias Blackleach. As the fever for witch hunting reached its terrible peak, Blackleach was accused of using powerful black magic against his fellow townsfolk. But just before he could be brought to trial, he dropped dead, escaping justice forever. Or so it seemed.

Trouble is brewing in the first book of the Tales from the Five Kingdoms series. The sorceress Lady Lamorna wants a skull-studded gown of deep black velvet but finds her treasure chest empty of gold. That doesn't stop her from kidnapping, blackmailing, and using more than a little magic to get what she needs. Will all her plans be foiled by the heroic Gracie Gillypot, two chatty bats, a gallant prince, the wickedest stepsister ever, a troll with a grudge, and some very Ancient Crones?

As beautiful as the night can be, it often plays a role in something more foreboding, supplying the catalyst for things both terrifying and imaginative. Utilizing this hallowed time of the day, author Chad Lutzke has written and compiled 18 stories, with creature features, sleep deprivation, hiding the undead, revenge, cannibalism, morbid habits, and executions of karma being just a handful of the themes covered in this book.

'When you come to the house, you will hear strange tales. They will tell you in the village that it is haunted, but you must not be afraid. When the time comes ... you will know what to do.' Mr Blunden's words echoed through Lucy's ears as she explored the house. It was such an old house that it seemed to Lucy as if all the past was gathered up inside it as if in a great box; as though it had a life of its own that continued to exist just beyond the reach of her eyes and ears.