If you are a fan of the tight-knit friend groups of Stephen King’s It and Stand by Me, you will love these stories of friends fighting together to save their communities from evil. Curated by Tabor Millien.
Within the Woods by Tony Urban
Something is lurking within the woods…
For 12-year-old Garrett and his four best friends, the summer of 1989 is supposed to be unforgettable. Games at the carnival, riding bikes on back roads, renting movies to watch in their clubhouse. It’s as close to perfect as a boy’s life could be… until Garrett’s older brother vanishes.
And then things get weird. Really weird.
Something is wrong in Sallow Creek, Pennsylvania.
Something is changing their neighbors, infecting their families.
Something is coming for them.
For fans of books and movies like Stranger Things, Stephen King, Stand by Me, The Goonies, etc. comes a thrilling new novel from horror author Tony Urban.
Growing up has never been so scary.
The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal
It’s 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina, a sleepy little place with all the trappings of an ordinary Southern town- two Baptist churches, friendly smiles coupled with silent judgments, and a seemingly unquenchable appetite for pork products. Beneath the town’s cheerful facade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to The Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a record of putting unruly teens back on the straight and narrow-a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the mysterious deaths that have occurred there over the past decade.
At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told-that the students’ strange demises were all tragic accidents. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry-and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment-Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.
Eager to rescue their friend, Rex and Leif pair up with recent NYU film school grad Janine Blitstein to begin piecing together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder, Wayne Whitewood. What they find, with Alicia’s life hanging in the balance, will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest teenage imaginations-one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core.
The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson
A short, irresistible, and bittersweet coming-of-age story in the vein of “Stranger Things” and “Stand by Me” about a group of misfit kids who spend an unforgettable summer investigating local ghost stories and urban legends.
Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls–a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place–Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the “Saturday Night Ghost Club.” But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly lighthearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become.
A Misfortune of Lake Monsters by Nicole M. Wolverton
When legends bite back.
Lemon Ziegler wants to escape rural Devil’s Elbow, Pennsylvania to attend college–but that’s impossible now that she’s expected to impersonate the town’s lake monster for the rest of her life. Her family has been secretly keeping the tradition of Old Lucy, the famed (and very fake) monster of Lake Lokakoma, alive for generations, all to keep the tourists coming. Without Lemon, the town dies, and she can’t disappoint her grandparents . . . or tell her best friends about any of it. That includes Troy Ramirez, who has been covertly in love with Lemon for years, afraid to ruin their friendship by confessing his feelings. When a very real, and very hungry monster is discovered in the lake, secrets must fall by the wayside. Determined to stop the monster, Lemon and her best friends are the only thing standing between Devil’s Elbow and the monster out for blood.
For readers who enjoy Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain, and The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst.
Chuck Warren died tragically at the old abandoned mill, but Paz Espino knows it was no accident – there’s a monster under the town, and she’s determined to kill it before anyone else gets hurt. She’ll need the help of her crew – inseparable friends, bound by a childhood pact stronger than diamonds, distance or death – to hunt it down. But she’s up against a greater force of evil than she ever could have imagined. With shifting timeframes and multiple perspectives, Lockjaw is a small-town ghost story, where monsters living and dead haunt the streets, the homes and the minds of the inhabitants. For readers of Wilder Girls and The Haunted, this trans YA horror book by an incredible debut author will grab you and never let you go.
In this “terrifyingly fun” (NYT) horror comedy, two friends must solve the mystery of their long-missing former friend’s supernatural reappearance–perfect for fans of Stranger Things.
Growing up, Cori, Maz, and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for pop culture, Halloween, and arcade games. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead, and Maz has good reason to believe he was kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?
These days, all Maz wants to do is party and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori hides her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubblegum veneer of a high school queen bee. But then Sam returns–still twelve years old, while his best friends are now seventeen. What really happened the night he disappeared? And just because he’s back, does that mean he’s safe? To find answers, Cori, Maz, and Sam will need to reveal secrets they never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all . . .
The Stars Did Wander Darkling by Colin Meloy
A suspenseful and atmospheric horror set in 1980s Oregon, perfect for fans of Stranger Things, Neil Gaiman, and Margaret Peterson Haddix, from New York Times bestselling author and the Decemberists’ lead singer/songwriter, Colin Meloy.
Maybe Archie Coomes has been watching too many horror movies.
All of a sudden, the most ordinary things have taken on a sinister edge: a penny on a doormat. An odd man in a brown suit under a streetlamp. The persistent sound of an ax chopping in the middle of the night.
He keeps telling himself that this is Seaham, a sleepy seaside town where nothing ever happens. Or at least nothing did, until his dad’s construction company opened up the cliff beneath the old–some say cursed–Langdon place.
Soon, though, he and his friends can’t deny it: more and more of the adults in town are acting strangely. An ancient, long-buried evil has been unleashed upon the community, and it’s up to the kids to stop it before it’s too late. . . .
The Supernatural Society by Rex Ogle
Will Hunter thought his life couldn’t get any worse:
- His parents just got divorced,
- His best (and only) friend now is his dog, Fitz,
- And his mom moved them from New York City to the middle-of-nowhere town called East Emerson.
But Will was wrong–things are about to get way worse. Because East Emerson is filled with a whole lot of monsters, and he’s the only person who can see them.
When all the town pets (including Fitz) go missing, Will suspects there’s something sinister going on. So he joins forces with outcast Ivy and super-smart Linus to uncover the ancient secrets of East Emerson. Besides, nothing bad could happen when three sixth graders team up against monsters, magic, myths, and mad science . . . right?
Olive Cobin Zang has . . . issues. And they mostly aren’t her fault. (No, really!) Though she often slips under the radar, problems have a knack for finding her. So, imagine her doubts when she’s suddenly dropped off at the strangest boarding school ever- a former castle turned prison that’s now a “reforming arts school”!
But nothing could’ve prepared Olive for RASCH (not “rash”). There, she’s lumped with a team of other kids who never quite fit in and discovers that the academy isn’t what it seems-and neither is she. In fact, RASCH is a cover for an elite group of misfits who fight crime . . . and Olive has arrived just in time.
Turns out that RASCH is in danger of closing, unless Olive’s class can stop the heist of the century. And as Olive falls in love with this wacky school, she realizes it’s up to her new team to save the only home that’s ever welcomed them.
Shelf Analysis 