As the weather cools and the dark encroaches earlier and earlier every evening, your best companion is a book with thrills and chills galore. The list below has some spook-tacular ideas for creepy tales, so we hope that you’ll dive right in (at your own risk)!
How to Survive Your Murder by Danielle Valentine (9th grade & up)
YA F VALENTINE
Knocked out before she can testify against the man suspected of killing her sister Claire, Alice wakes up a year earlier, on the same day Claire was murdered, and has until midnight to save her sister and to bring the real killer to justice.
The Dare by Danielle Valentine (8th grade & up)
YA PB F PRESTON
In Marley’s town, seniors are given a prank as a rite of passage…a dare, if you will. The dares start out simple…egging houses, balloons filled with glitter, chickens running loose in the halls. But this is no child’s play.
Accepting a dare means you could be expelled, arrested, or worse. No one wants to back down from a dare. But saying yes has consequences, too…
I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga (9th grade & up)
YA F LYGA
Jazz learned all about being a serial killer from his father, but believes he has a conscience that will help fight his own urges and right some of his father's wrongs, so he helps the police apprehend the town's newest murderer.
Such Charming Liars by Karen McManus (9th grade & up)
YA F LYGA
Helping her mother pull off one last heist at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party, Kat tries to avoid her former stepbrother Liam, but when a Sutherland is murdered, Kat and Liam become the new targets and can’t trust anyone except each other – or can they?
All Better Now by Neal Shusterman (7th grade & up)
YA F SHUSTERMAN
Three teens seek to unravel the truth behind conflicting agendas surrounding a deadly virus that could change humanity forever.
Silent Sister by Megan Davidhizar (9th grade & up)
YA F DAVIDHIZAR
Found injured, with her sister’s blood on her clothes, Grace must piece together what happened on the school trip with the help of her sister’s notebook and the classmates who know more than they’re telling the police about that tragic night.
She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (8th grade & up)
YA F TRAN
Staying in Vietnam at the house her estranged father is restoring, Jade, plagued by sleep paralysis, bugs and a ghostly apparition, must expose the evil lurking in its walls before dark forces consume them all.
The Woods Are Always Watching by Stephanie Perkins (9th grade & up)
YA F PERKINS
When two girls go backpacking deep in the woods of the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, things go very wrong when they cross paths with a serial killer.
You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron (8th grade & up)
YA F BAYRON
Recreating scenes from a classic slasher film for a full-contact terror game, Charity Curtis, who plays the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake, finds her role turning all too real when a killer starts picking off her co-workers one by one.
What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell (9th grade & up)
YA F HOLLOWELL
When two friends ditch their school field trip to an amusement park, they stumble across an abandoned corn maze that has no exit, but does have multiple corpses that look just like them.