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Horror Books for Middle Grade and YA Readers

Spine-tingling books to read if you dare!

Middle Grade Titles

Cover of Nightmare Island
Shakirah
Bourne

Twelve-year-old Serenity has a recurring nightmare, but things get real when her parents take her brother, Peace, to Duppy Island for "treatment" and Serenity is confronted by the creepy Dr. Whisper and the faceless douen children who are trapped between the living and the dead.

Cover of Serwa Boateng's Guide to V
Roseanne A.
Brown

After her home is attacked by shapeshifting vampires, twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng is sent to live with her aunt and cousin in Maryland, but the aspiring vampire hunter discovers that middle school is harder than it appears on television, especially when she has to avoid detention and turn her classmates into warriors before they become vampire food.

Cover of The Very Unfortunate Wish
Waka T.
Brown

In this modern-day retelling of the Japanese folktale The Melon Princess and the Amanjaku, twelve-year-old Melony befriends a wish-granting demon who encourages her to rebel against her overprotective parents, all while using her for his own evil scheme.

Cover of The International House of
Jacqueline
Davies

Quirky, tool-wielding Alice Cannoli-Potchnik begins to repair the dilapidated mansion next door--only to discover the old house is home to ghosts, and they need mending too.

Cover of The Polter-Ghost Problem
Betsy
Uhrig

Best friends Aldo, Pen, and Jasper stumble onto an abandoned orphanage and discover that freeing a houseful of imprisoned ghosts from an angry poltergeist could get them into serious trouble.

 

Middle Grade Short Stories Collection

Cover of The Dark-Thirty: Southern
Patricia
McKissack

A collection of original spine-tingling tales inspired by African-American history and the oral storyteller tradition.

Cover of Eerie Tales from the Schoo
Graham
Annable

Davis and Emily aren't scared of school because of tough tests or merciless vice-principals. No, they're scared because their teacher wants her students to present the class with the spookiest, most chilling stories they can think of.

Cover of Hide and Don't Seek: And O
Anica Mrose
Rissi

A contemporary collection of original short stories by Anica Mrose Rissi that is sure to elicit chills, laughs, and screams, even from the most devoted fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark!

Cover of Living Ghosts and Mischiev
Dan Sasuweh
Jones
Weshoyot Alvitre

Thirty-two short stories chosen from the tradition of ghost stories from American Indian cultures across North America, featuring witches, walking dolls, hungry skeletons, skinwakers, and other supernatural beings.

Cover of The Puppet's Payback and O
Mary Downing
Hahn

From ghost story master Mary Downing Hahn, an assortment of eerie short stories to thrill and chill young readers.

Cover of The Sister Who Ate Her Bro
Jen
Campbell
Adam de Souza

In this collection, fourteen of fairy tales from around the world are retold for readers, restored to their original, grisly versions.

Cover of Stinetinglers: All New Sto
R.L.
Stine

Laced with Stine's signature humor and a hefty dose of nightmarish fun, Stinetinglers is perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Stine's own Goosebumps books. Don't miss Stinetinglers 2: 10 More New Stories by the Master of Scary Tales either!

Cover of Tales to Keep You Up at Ni
Dan
Poblocki
Marie Bergeron

Ignoring a handwritten warning from her grandmother, Amelia reads an old book she finds in the attic, and as elements from the stories begin to come to life around her, she realizes that she may be in a spooky story of her own.

 

Popular Middle Grade Horror Authors

YA Titles

Cover of All the Dead Lie Down
Kyrie
McCauley

Newly orphaned seventeen-year old Marin accepts a nanny position for an acclaimed horror writer and her mother's childhood friend, but she soon realizes all is not well at Lovelace House and must unravel its secrets before they consume her.

Cover of A Crooked Mark
Linda
Kao

Tasked with hunting down those whose soul the Devil has marked, seventeen-year-old Matthew begins to question everything when his first solo mission is sixteen-year-old Rae Winters, the girl he has fallen for.

Cover of Harvest House
Cynthia Leitich
Smith

As Muskogee sophomore Hughie Wolfe volunteers at a haunted house fundraiser, he weighs speaking out against a bigoted character, and investigates strange things that have been occurring at the crossroads near Harvest House at night.

Cover of Man Made Monsters
Andrea
Rogers
Jeff Edwards

Haunting illustrations are woven throughout these horror stories that follow one extended Cherokee family across the centuries and well into the future as they encounter predators of all kinds in each time period.

Cover of My Dear Henry: A Jekyll &
Kalynn
Bayron

In this gothic YA remix of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, a teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend's disappearance--and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic stranger--in misty Victorian London.
 

Cover of Saint Juniper's Folly
Alex
Crespo

The Folly and its ghosts draws three teenagers together but can they each face their demons to forge a bond strong enough to escape the Folly's shadows? Alex Crespo’s queer haunted house mystery is equal parts spine-tingling thrills, a celebration of found family, and must-read for paranormal romance fans.

Cover of She Is a Haunting
Trang Thanh
Tran

Seventeen-year-old Jade Nguyen is spending the summer in Vietnam at the French colonial house her estranged father is fixing up as a vacation rental, but unbeknownst to her family, the house and its ghosts have other plans.

Cover of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
Andrew Joseph
White

Set in an alternate Victorian England where mediums control the dead, sixteen-year-old autistic transgender boy Silas must expose a power-hungry secret society while confined to a cruel finishing school designed to turn him into the perfect wife.

Cover of This Delicious Death
Kayla
Cottingham

When four best friends with a hunger for human flesh attend a music festival in the desert they discover a murderous plot to expose and vilify the girls and everyone like them. This summer is going to get gory.

Cover of We Don’t Swim Here
Vincent
Tirado

Bronwyn is miserable living temporarily in rural Hillwoods. Her grandmother is dying, everyone is standoffish, and she can't even go swimming. All she hears are warnings about going in the water, despite a gorgeous lake, a pool at the abandoned rec center and another in the high school basement. The living aren't the only ones who seek retribution when they're wronged. When Bronwyn does more exploring than she should, she and her cousin are both in for danger they couldn't expect.