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Dan’s hoped-for summer of making friends turns into an investigation with Abby and Jordan. The former asylum’s hidden spaces and history connect the three teenagers to secrets from its past.

A friendship-led adventure combines a mythical figure with a sequence of daily challenges and changing superpower choices.

A haunted-house mystery links Harper’s forgotten accidents and her brother’s unusual behaviour with spirits, while bringing Korean traditions and Jamaican cultural details into the story.

Expect a blend of vampire lore and factual material, rather than a clearly identified continuous story. Dracula is included, alongside historical and cultural references to famous vampire stories.

This pairs a would-be chef’s summer job with a secret monster-hunting operation, balancing a team setting and comic-sounding pizza names with a supernatural threat.

A supernatural-leaning horror collection, built around ordinary situations that turn sinister. Its eighteen tales offer varied unsettling premises rather than one continuous plot.

This is a supernatural horror setup built around a childhood game turned genuinely dangerous. The central tension combines a threatened life with a relationship disrupted by a rival's possessiveness.

This is a horror mystery built around Abby’s effort to learn what happened to her mother. Its appeal may lie in the unanswered disappearance and the group’s encounter in the cave.

A set of thirteen suspenseful horror tales, with folklore and urban-legend elements and child characters encountering supernatural threats.

A varied collection of classic short fiction, with Gothic horror and suspense alongside crime and detective mysteries. The contents include stories such as “The Gold-Bug” and “The Purloined Letter” as well as darker-sounding titles.

The nested-story structure gives the book two levels to follow: the frightening tales and their connection to Uncle Montague’s memories.

Expect a varied set of spooky premises rather than one continuous plot: the stories include supernatural and Halloween-themed situations, and each has its own illustrator.

Expect an interactive ghost story where choices lead along different routes, rather than one fixed sequence of events.

A varied collection combining Poe’s short fiction and poetry with steampunk-inspired illustrations. The contents include horror, crime and mystery stories as well as poems.

A camp romance takes a frightening turn when Sam’s dream leads her to Dennis, while her twin Ali wants his attention too.

This combines school-theatre rivalry with a creepy-house Christmas setting.

A family mystery combining time-period portals, a missing mother, a threatening stranger and a house full of secrets. The story appears to build suspense through pursuit, uncertainty and questions about who is watching the family.

This is a grief-centred thriller about vulnerability, belonging and coercive influence. Ruby’s attraction to Fox’s community develops gradually, shifting the atmosphere from apprehension towards horror as its rules and secrets become more troubling.

Choose this for a brisk horror read built around supernatural danger, pursuit and suspense. It offers vivid momentum and teenage immediacy, but may suit readers seeking atmosphere and escapism more than intricate character development.

This is an informational tour through horror cinema: its origins, recurring figures, subgenres, appeal and changing special effects. It ranges from silent Frankenstein to later popular films and includes photographs.

Choose this for a reader who enjoys interactive horror, making decisions and revisiting different routes. Its strongest appeal is variety: the cruise can lead towards experiments, pursuit, survival situations and many endings.

This is a fast-moving supernatural adventure built around fugitives, pursuit and an unusual romantic triangle. Its appeal lies in alternating teenage viewpoints, comic observations and emotional conflict, while its zombie premise brings deliberately gross and frightening material.

This is a supernatural horror story about a shy teenager whose dream relationship becomes controlling and threatening. Its main appeal is the uncertainty over what is real, while its fast pace repeatedly shifts between mystery, pursuit and grotesque danger.

A dark, intense revenge fantasy about a teenager confronting sexual violence, seeking to save someone important to her and using magic that comes at a stated price. Expect horror, suspense and graphic imagery.

This is a varied speculative-fiction collection rather than one continuous story. Its appeal lies in imaginative settings, changing moods and morally pressured situations, but the individual stories may differ considerably in intensity and subject matter.

This is a child-centred horror adventure built around a frightening dummy, sibling behaviour and uncertainty about whether Slappy has become alive. It offers suspense without establishing the full outcome.

This appears to be a children’s chapter book associated with haunted-house and scary themes.

This is a participatory scary adventure: the reader faces a beastly babysitter, chooses between dangers, and reaches one of many spooky endings. Its main appeal is playful suspense and the feeling that choices shape what happens next.

This is a pick-and-mix reading experience: familiar characters, comic poems, memoir, letters and story extracts offer changing moods and subjects. It suits shared selection of individual pieces more naturally than uninterrupted reading.

Expect an unsettling horror story involving people whose identities and bodies are altered by an alien force. Its speculative premise also raises questions about humanity, control, pain and the cost of protecting others.

A brisk collection of child-centred horror tales, designed to deliver a complete fright in a short sitting. Its appeal lies in variety, strange situations and creepy illustrations rather than one continuing narrative.

This is a dark, genre-blending investigation: an apparently crime-free city faces gruesome murders, while two investigators follow clues through chases, unusual communities and dangerous alchemy.

A comic, eventful story about Greg’s schemes, anxieties and ambitions, with Halloween scares, school life and family friction providing the framework. Its appeal lies chiefly in mishaps and visual humour; its treatment of Greg’s choices is more consequence-driven than exemplary.

This is a contained, high-pressure murder mystery with horror elements: an isolated theme park, a stalking mascot, successive deaths and a buried history that the protagonists must unravel.

A horror-comedy sequel with a strongly supernatural setting, school friendships and a continuing threat from Charley’s past. Its appeal lies in combining eerie atmosphere with genre-aware humour and a central relationship marked by betrayal.

This is a fast-moving horror adventure built around a familiar childhood game becoming strange and threatening. Its unusual file-based presentation adds mystery, while the friendship between Adam and Sol gives the frightening situation an emotional centre.

Choose this for a creepy, atmospheric mystery centred on horror-film culture, a disturbing small-town setting and escalating suspense. Its appeal lies in eerie world-building and supernatural uncertainty rather than gentle or reassuring storytelling.

A grief-laden investigation gradually turns a picturesque summer academy into a threatening, psychologically unstable place. The novel combines queer identity, family pressure and gender-role criticism with folk-horror imagery, suspense and disturbing supernatural danger.

A horror premise places Charity and her friends inside a frightening version of the attraction they work in. Expect slasher suspense, dark humour, romance, disappearances and graphic violence, alongside questions about survival and familiar genre roles.

This is a high-intensity horror story centred on a transgender teenager, queer community and survival after an apocalypse. Its appeal is likely strongest for readers who actively want graphic body horror alongside questions of identity and belonging.

Choose this for a YA reader drawn to supernatural mysteries, hidden village secrets, witchcraft and folk horror. The remote setting and archaeological discovery suggest an atmosphere-led story with suspense at its centre.

A claustrophobic sea-set mystery with supernatural and mythological elements, it offers suspense, eerie atmosphere and questions about trust. Liv’s scholarship places her among wealthy influencers, giving the investigation a social-inequality strand alongside disappearance, romance and horror.

A creepy, energetic adventure that combines frightening creatures and suspense with banter, humour and an emphasis on four unlike students learning to support one another.

Expect a fast, twist-filled fantasy adventure that treats a frightening grandmother as an exaggerated comic villain. Joe’s difficult family life sits alongside grotesque peril and suspense, so the tone is more unsettling than an ordinary family story.

This is a high-stakes fantasy finale about survival during spreading environmental catastrophe, as characters oppose Ruin and try to preserve a future for their world. It combines large-scale conflict with questions of faith, responsibility and sacrifice.