I figure you're already familiar with R. L. Stine, so you won't find his series books here, although you'll find other series. There are several different kinds of horror books, and I've tried to suggest a few of each. Remember, your mileage may vary! Some of these books will appeal more to younger teens while others were written with older teens and adults in mind.
| Featuring Creatures You Never Want to Meet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Title Of Book | Author | Call Number |
| Thirsty | M.T. Anderson | TEEN PPB ANDERSON |
| From the moment he knows that he is destined to be a vampire, Chris thirsts for the blood of people around him while also struggling to remain human. | ||
| In the Forests of the Night | Amelia Atwater-Rhodes | YA ATWATER-RHODES |
| Risika, a teenage vampire, wanders back in time to the year 1684 when, as a human, she died and was transformed against her will. (Atwater-Rhodes wrote this book when she was 13. She now has written four other books.) | ||
| Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury | TEEN TKBK BRADBURY |
| Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show arrives in the small town of Green Town, Illinois just before Halloween. Something wicked this way comes indeed. | ||
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Harvest There are several books in this series. |
There are several authors in this series. | TEEN PPB BUFFY |
| Buffy is starting at Sunnydale High after having been kicked out of her old school. She hopes she's escaped from her appointed role as the Slayer, the one girl in all the world who is born to kill vampires and demons. Little does she know that the Master is waiting for her in Sunnydale. | ||
| Shadowland (Mediator 1) | Jenny Carroll (aka Meg Cabot) | YA PPB CARROLL/CABOT |
| Susannah discovered at a very young age that she could see ghosts. It took her a while to realize that most people can't. Eventually she discovers she's a mediator, responsible for seeing that ghosts finish their business on Earth and leave. The trouble is, some ghosts just don't want to leave. If they're cute guys like Jesse (who lives in her bedroom), that's not so bad. But if they're jealous, murderous ghosts like Heather, that's another story entirely. (There are others in this series.) | ||
| A Fate Totally Worse Than Death | Paul Fleischman | YA FLEISCHMAN |
| In this funny horror novel parody, three self-centered members of Cliffside High School's ruling clique, who are beginning to age rapidly, become convinced that the beautiful new exchange student is the ghost of the girl whose death they caused the year before. | ||
| Coraline | Neil Gaiman | YA GAIMAN |
| Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others. | ||
| Look for Me By Moonlight | Mary Downing Hahn | YA PPB HAHN |
| While staying at the remote and supposedly haunted Maine inn run by her father and pregnant stepmother, sixteen-year-old Cynda feels more and more isolated from her father's new family and more and more attracted to a charming but mysterious guest. | ||
| Blood Price (First in a series) |
Tanya Huff | YA PPB HUFF |
| Sorcerers of the Nightwing | Geoffrey Huntington | TEEN HUNTINGTON |
| Every kid fears the monsters in the closet -- but for Devon March, the monsters are real. But Devon, though he doesn't know it, is a Sorcerer of the Nightwing. He'll need all the powers at his command when he is sent to live at Ravenscliff, where a Hellhole and a Nightwing gone bad await him. (Ravenscliff Series, Book 1) | ||
| Vicki Nelson, a former Toronto police detective, becomes involved in solving a series of brutal murders. The crimes seem to be committed by a supernatural agency. In the process of investigating, Vicki encounters 450 year old vampire Henry Fitzroy. They become partners in many ways. | ||
| Cujo | Stephen King | YA PPB KING |
| Cujo, a friendly, playful 200-pound Saint Bernard, chases a rabbit into an underground cavern. When he emerges from the darkness, he is something else. Something that the men, women, and children of Castle rock, Maine, do not suspect until is too late. | ||
| Blood and Chocolate | Annette Curtis Klause | YA KLAUSE/YA PPB KLAUSE |
| Having fallen for a human, a "meat boy", a beautiful teenage werewolf must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople to decide where she belongs and with whom. | ||
| The Silver Kiss | Annette Curtis Klause | YA PPB KLAUSE |
| In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Misadventures | David Lubar | TEEN LUBAR |
| This one will make you laugh and give you the creeps. What happens when you lose your father's detached hand? What happens when a substitute teacher doesn't listen to her students' warnings? Do you really want to know? (Yes!) | ||
| A mysterious boy helps Zoë come to terms with her mother's terminal illness. In turn, he needs her help to fight an equally terrible enemy. | ||
| Vlad the Undead | Hanna Lutzen | YA LUTZEN |
| Written as a series of manuscripts, letters, and diary entries, Vlad the Undead brings to life a new story of Dracula and a contemporary young woman's fascination with him. | ||
| Twilight | Stephanie Meyer | TEEN MEYER |
| When Bella moves to Washington State and starts school, she can't understand why her lab partner Edward hates her so much. She soon discovers that hate isn't what he's feeling. She also discovers he isn't what he appears to be. | ||
| Night Terrors | Lois Duncan (editor) | YA NIGHT |
| "Stories of shadow and substance" by authors such as Alane Ferguson, Annette Curtis Klause, Chris Lynch, Harry and Norma Fox Mazer, Joan Lowery Nixon, Theodore Taylor, and Patricia Windsor | ||
| Darkangel (First in a trilogy) |
Meredith Pierce | YA PPB PIERCE |
| The servant girl Aeriel must choose between destroying her vampire master for his evil deeds or saving him for the sake of his beauty and the spark of goodness she has seen in him. | ||
| Cirque du Freak | Darren Shan | YA SHAN |
| Two boys who are best friends visit an illegal freak show, where an encounter with a vampire and a deadly spider forces them to make life-changing choices.(First in a series) | ||
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | YA PPB SHELLEY |
| Dangerous Girls | R.L. Stine | TEEN STINE |
| Destiny Weller and her twin sister, Livvy, were as close as two sisters could be -- until Livvy chose to become a vampire. Now Destiny will do anything to bring Livvy back to the family. But Livvy knows there is only one way she and Destiny can be reunited -- Destiny must become a vampire too... Which sister will win in the end? | ||
| A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. This classic is one of the first true horror stories. | ||
| Dracula | Bram Stoker | YA STOKER/ YA PPB STOKER |
| Count Dracula is not only a nobleman, he is also the vampire who is terrorizing Transylvania and seducing young women. Jonathan Harker and Dr. van Helsing are determined to destroy him. | ||
| Companions of the Night | Vivian Vande Velde | YA VANDE VELDE |
| Kerry Nowicki helps a young man escape from three other men who claim he is a vampire and, when her father and little brother are kidnapped, Kerry joins forces--and falls in love with--the accused vampire. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. | ||
| The Blooding | Patricia Windsor | YA WINDSOR/YA PPB WINDSOR |
| While spending the summer working as an au pair girl for a couple in England, Maris discovers that the husband is a werewolf intent on blooding her and making her one too. | ||
| Interview with a Vampire | Anne Rice | TEEN PPB RICE |
| Most of Anne Rice's books are in the adult fiction area, but if you're really into vampires and you want to bite into the steamy stuff, she's the one to sink your teeth into. | ||
| Full Tilt | Neil Shusterman | TEEN PPB SHUSTERMAN |
| When sixteen-year-old Blake goes to a mysterious, by-invitation-only carnival, he somehow knows that it could save his comatose brother. He soon learns that much more is at stake if he fails to meet the challenge presented to him there by the beautiful Cassandra. | ||
| When Hell is Other People | ||
|---|---|---|
| Title Of Book | Author | Call Number |
| Grounding of Group 6 | Julian Thompson | YA THOMPSON |
| Arriving at what they believe is an exclusive school, five sixteen-year olds are unaware that they have been sent there to be exterminated and that their teacher is a murderer for hire. | ||
| Tenderness | Robert Cormier | YA CORMIER |
| A psychological thriller told from the points of view of a teenage serial killer and the runaway girl who falls in love with him. | ||
| Stranger With My Face | Lois Duncan | YA DUNCAN/YA PPB DUNCAN |
| A seventeen-year-old senses she is being spied on and probably impersonated, but when she discovers what actually is occurring, it is more unbelievable than she ever imagined. | ||
| The Stalker | Carol Ellis | YA PPB ELLIS |
| Janna always wanted to be a star. Now she finally has an adoring fan, but what seems like innocent admiration soon turns into a terrifying obsession. | ||
| Carrie | Stephen King | YA PPB KING |
| Sixteen-year-old Carrie is teased and abused by everyone from her classmates to her mother and teachers. But you shouldn't mess with a girl with telekinetic powers. One day she's going to get really, really angry. And when she does... | ||
| Girl in the Box | Ouida Sebestyen | YA PPB SEBESTYEN |
| Kidnapped and left in an underground room, Jackie must try to stay sane as she tries to make contact with the outside world. | ||
| House of Stairs | William Sleator | YA PPB SLEATOR |
| Five sixteen-year-olds are involuntarily placed in a house of endless stairs as subjects for a psychological experiment on conditioned human response. | ||
| Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson | YA PPB STEVENSON |
| A kind and well-respected doctor can turn himself into a murderous madman by taking a secret drug he's created. | ||
| Fall of the House of Usher & Other Tales | Edgar Allen Poe | YA PPB POE |
| Poe is not only credited as the author of the first mystery, he was a master of tales of horror. This is a collection of some of his mystery and horror short stories. | ||
Updated January 8, 2003