To most people, October 31 means Halloween. To Samantha Genetti, it’s her birthday. The protagonist of Halloween Party is turning seventeen soon, and her friends are throwing a masquerade to celebrate the occasion. In the meantime, Samantha quietly lives in fear after receiving a series of threatening notes from an unknown sender. Something dangerous awaits […]
The post Wendy Corsi Staub’s 1994 YA Book Throws a Killer ‘Halloween Party’ [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted in the Spring of 1997, there was no Halloween episode in the first season. However, Simon and Schuster’s series of tie-in novels fixed that oversight by including an original story that expands on Buffy Summers’ first year at Sunnydale High. Here the Chosen One is still getting used to […]
The post ‘Buffy’ Tie-In Novel “Halloween Rain” Pits the Slayer Against Samhain [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Christopher Pike knows his way around death, but how the author approaches the act of mortality in The Midnight Club is unique, even for him. In spite of the foreboding blurb and Brian Kotzky‘s creepy artwork, this 1994 book isn’t about young people dying at the hands of an external threat. Here death comes from […]
The post Christopher Pike’s ‘The Midnight Club’ – Why It’s Such a Unique Story of Young Death [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Baronet Books is best known for its Great Illustrated Classics series, but in the ‘90s, the Waldman imprint took a walk on the scary side. Between 1995 and 1997, various authors contributed to a set of children’s horror anthologies called Fright Time. Kids who stumbled upon these books — often at local discount stores, such […]
The post ‘Fright Time’ – ’90s Horror Anthology Books Deliver Scary Fun for Kids [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
With the success of both Fear Street and Goosebumps in the early ‘90s, it only made sense to combine them into one series. And R. L. Stine’s Ghosts of Fear Street is essentially that. Just the kiddos are now the targets of undue terror in Shadyside, though the dangers are strictly otherworldly. Everything from phantoms […]
The post ‘Ghosts of Fear Street’ – The Spinoff Series That Mixed ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Fear Street’ [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
With copies of Fear Street flying off shelves, it only made sense for other publishers to put out their own young-adult horror series in the 1990s. And Berkley Books’ venture was Terror Academy, a fifteen-volume collection of high-school horror and thrills. C. A. Stokes, writing under the pen name of Nicholas Pine, kicked things off […]
The post ‘Lights Out’ Channels ‘The Stepfather’ in First Book from the ‘Terror Academy’ Series [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
The namesake of Wait Till Helen Comes is no friendly ghost. She may act protective, yet Helen is the furthest thing from a guardian angel. The fact is, the deceptive spirit of Mary Downing Hahn’s 1986 book habitually sets her sights on children, preys on their insecurities and twists the truth to her advantage. Indeed, […]
The post Mary Downing Hahn’s ‘Wait Till Helen Comes’ Is a Benchmark in Children’s Ghost Stories [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Trains as a mode of travel seems old-fashioned nowadays, but in storytelling, they remain a persuasive setting for tales of unease and suspense. The endless railroad does wonders for Diane Hoh’s 1992 young-adult book aptly titled The Train. By placing her characters on a cross-country tour with no handy means of escape, the author underlines […]
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Trapping characters in a single location makes for a compelling story. And having everyone be strangers certainly helps rack up conflict and drama as well. Sure, it’s an overworked formula at this point, but the results are undeniable. Eric Weiner, a ghostwriter for Fear Street Sagas, gave the recipe a whirl in his 1994 book […]
The post Eric Weiner’s ‘Deadly Detention’ Turns ‘The Breakfast Club’ into a Bloody Slasher [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
According to the horror genre, summer camps are teeming with killers and other unusual dangers. These seasonal getaways designed for adventure and fun quickly turn into fights for survival. And it’s not just in the movies where a young camper’s sleeping bag doubles as their body bag; books also present camps as hotbeds of death, […]
The post Carol Ellis Delivers Summer Camp Horror in 1993’s ‘Camp Fear’ [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
In spite of its title, Road to Nowhere has a conclusive ending. And a powerful one, at that. Christopher Pike’s 1993 novel puts its troubled protagonist behind the wheel and shadows her every move and thought as she drives along the California coast one fateful night. The path ahead of her is unclear, but one […]
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Twenty-two people died one fateful Halloween in Wickburg, Massachusetts. And as far as the town is concerned, the killer is still on the loose. Robert Cormier’s In the Middle of the Night sounds like it has the makings of a slasher story based on that vague description, but this 1995 novel’s high body count is […]
The post Robert Cormier’s ‘In the Middle of the Night’ Answers the Call of Fear [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Casual fans of Goosebumps can usually expect to find some kind of supernatural creature or other bizarre baddie in these books, but R. L. Stine briefly changed gears toward the end of the classic series. The previous 58 entries covered a wide span of far-out villains and unique scenarios, with each one being weirder than […]
The post R. L. Stine’s ‘Goosebumps’ Goes to a Dark Place in “The Haunted School” [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
With so many people passing through them over the years, it would only make sense for hotels to be haunted. T.S. Rue is one of many storytellers who agrees with the possibility, and starting in 1993, the young-adult author explored the goings-on at a ghostly getaway called Arcadia. Rue, who also goes by Morton Rhue […]
The post T.S. Rue’s ‘Nightmare Inn’ Series Opened With Murder and Time Travel [Buried in a Book] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
Before Jennifer Love Hewitt and her castmates ever felt the sharp end of an ice hook, I Know What You Did Last Summer was a novel by Lois Duncan. The famed young-adult author proposed a dilemma like few others when she pursued an idea of dual identities and a curiosity about hit-and-runs. This seminal 1973 […]
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