More like Deadly Deep
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- Jerusalem's Lot
series3 books1975
similar byhorroreerieour worldcontemporarytense+1 more
Stephen King's 1975 novel 'Salem's Lot follows writer Ben Mears as he returns to his childhood town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to discover that its residents are being turned into vampires by a newly arrived stranger. It transplants Gothic vampire horror into a small New England community, tracking that community's collapse under a supernatural siege. It is a single, self-contained novel.
- Small Spaces
series4 books2018
similar byhorroreerieour worldcontemporarymiddle gradesurvivaltense+1 more
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaimanstandalone novel2013
similar byfriendshipeerieour worldcontemporary+2 more
A seven year old farm boy becomes friends with an eleven year old neighbor girl, who he discovers is ancient and powerful and intervenes when a nonhuman entity attempts to make a home in earthly reality.
- The House Next Door
Darcy Coatesstandalone novel2017
similar byhorrorfriendshipeerieour worldcontemporarytense+1 more
I live next to a haunted house. I began to suspect something was wrong with the gothic building when its family fled in the middle of the night, the children screaming, the mother crying. They never came back to pack up their furniture. No family stays long. Animals avoid the place. Once, I thought I saw a woman’s silhouette pacing through the upstairs room… but that seems impossible; no one was living there at the time. A new occupant, Anna, has just moved in. I paid her a visit to warn her about the building. I didn’t expect us to become friends, but we did. And now that Marwick House is waking up, she’s asked me to stay with her. I never intended to become involved with the building or its vengeful, dead inhabitant. But now I have to save Anna… before it’s too late for the both of us.
- The Halloween Moon
Joseph Finkstandalone novel2021
similar byhorrorfriendshipeerieour worldcontemporarymiddle grade
Esther Gold loves Halloween more than anything in the world. So she is determined to go trick-or-treating again this year despite the fact that her parents think she is officially too old. Esther has it all planned out, from her costume to her candy-collecting strategy. But when the night rolls around, something feels... off. No one is answering their door. The moon is an unnatural shade of orange. Strange children wander the streets, wearing creepy costumes that might not be costumes at all. And it seems like the only people besides Esther who are awake to see it all are her best friend, her school bully, and her grown-up next-door neighbor. Together, this unlikely crew must find a way to lift the curse that has been placed upon their small town before it’s too late. Because someone is out to make sure Halloween never comes to an end. And even Esther doesn’t want to be trapped in this night forever.
- Goosebumps
universe234 books1992
Start hereRevenge of the Living Dummy · The connected HorrorLand story
similar byhorrorour worldcontemporarymiddle grade+3 more
Reader beware — you're in for a scare. That promise has been kept, book after book, since a boy first knocked on the door of the Dead House and found the whole neighborhood grinning too widely. Goosebumps is R. L. Stine's carnival of small-town dread, where the horror is always sized just right for a kid: a haunted ventriloquist dummy, a camera that photographs disasters before they happen, a mask that won't come off, a basement that hums. Each book is its own self-contained nightmare, narrated by an ordinary boy or girl whose ordinary street has quietly turned against them — and every one snaps shut on a twist that pulls the rug out one last time before the lights come up. The shelf is deep. The original run of paperbacks gave way to Series 2000, then the branching, choose-your-doom gamebooks of Give Yourself Goosebumps, the story-collections Tales to Give You Goosebumps, and villain showcases in Most Wanted. HorrorLand strung the standalones into a single running arc set inside a monstrous theme park, and SlappyWorld and House of Shivers keep the lights flickering for new readers, hosted by Slappy, the wooden fiend who considers himself the star of the whole show. The tone is mock-scary and knowing — spooky enough to thrill, silly enough to laugh off before bed, always short and always cliffhung. No reading order binds them; open any cover. Newcomers usually meet the dummy first, in Night of the Living Dummy, or start where it all began, in Welcome to Dead House.
- John and Dave
series4 books2007
similar byhorrorcontemporary+3 more
Jason Pargin, writing as David Wong, began the John Dies at the End series as a free horror-comedy webserial in 2001 before print publication turned it into a franchise. The Lovecraftian adventures of narrator John and his friend Dave continue across This Book Is Full of Spiders, What the Hell Did I Just Read, and If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, and the original novel was adapted into a 2012 film.
- The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe
Dan Poblockistandalone novel2013
similar byhorrorfriendshipeerieour worldcontemporarymiddle gradetense
Since eighth-grader Gabriel Ashe moved into his grandmother's house he has been spending a lot of time playing in the woods with his new friend Seth, but the games Seth invents involve a child-eating monster called the Hunter, and Gabriel is not sure how much is imagination and how much real.
- The Halloween Tree
Ray Bradburystandalone novel1972
similar byfriendshipour worldcontemporarymiddle grade+1 more
Eight boys gather on Halloween night to trick-or-treat with their ninth friend, Pipkin, only Pipkin never shows, having vanished on some errand that may cost him his life. A strange, black-robed guide named Moundshroud appears to lead the boys after him, and the chase turns into a journey through the history of the holiday itself: ancient Egypt, druidic Britain, Rome, medieval Paris, and the Mexican Day of the Dead, each stop peeling back another layer of how humanity has faced death and the dark. Ray Bradbury's Halloween novel doubles as a compressed history of the holiday's origins.
- The Ghost of Graylock
Dan Poblockistandalone novel2012
similar byhorrorfriendshipeerieour worldcontemporarymiddle grade
Staying with their aunts over the summer, Neil Cady, his sister Bree, and their new friends Wesley and Eric, set out to explore Greylock Hall, an abandoned psychiatric hospital which is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Nurse Janet. Staying with their aunts over the summer, Neil Cady, his sister, Bree, and their new friends Wesley and Eric set out to explore Graylock Hall, an abandoned psychiatric hospital which is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Nurse Janet.
- The Midnight Club
Christopher Pikestandalone novel1994
similar byfriendshiphorrorour worldcontemporary+1 more
When you think Christopher Pike, you probably think ax murderers, cursed chain letters, and the occasional evil lizard person — and with good reason! But in this sensitive novel, set at a hospice for terminally ill teens, Pike mashes up standard scary stories with an exploration of what fear really means when illness is more of a threat than haunted houses or sexy vampires.
- Bone Chillers
series23 books1994
similar byhorrorour worldcontemporarymiddle grade+3 more
Bone Chillers is a children's horror series created by Betsy Haynes, similar in spirit and format to Goosebumps, though later volumes in the 23-book run (1994-1998) were written by other credited authors. It also spun off into a television adaptation on which Haynes appeared to encourage young viewers to read, write, and be creative.
- The Staircase in the Woods
Chuck Wendigstandalone novel2025
similar byhorrorfriendshipeeriecontemporarytense
While on a camping trip, five high-schoolers bound by an oath to always protect one another discover something in the middle of the forest: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend climbs up but does not come back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later it reappears, and the friends return to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase.
- Into the Dark
Nicholas Wildestandalone novel1987
similar byhorrorfriendshipeeriecontemporary+1 more
A lonely boy's new friend has a frightening secret.
- The Paradise Trap
Catherine Jinksstandalone novel2011
similar bycontemporarymiddle gradesurvivaltense+3 more
Eleven-year-old Marcus is spending a week at the beach with his mother in a tiny old travel trailer, but boredom turns to terror when a new friend discovers a cellar that has magical doors through which people keep disappearing.
- Bod Owens
series3 books2007
similar byeerieour worldcontemporarymiddle grade+1 more
The Graveyard Book follows Nobody "Bod" Owens, a toddler who escapes the murder of his family and is raised among the ghosts of an old English graveyard, absorbing their otherworldly customs while a threat from his past waits beyond the gates. Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and illustrator P. Craig Russell later adapted it into a two-volume graphic novel. Bod's story spans the original novel and that graphic-novel retelling rather than continuing in a prose sequel.
- Into the Out of
Alan Dean Fosterstandalone novel1986
similar byhorroreeriecontemporarytense+2 more
Into the Out Of (1986) is a horror-science fiction novel by American writer Alan Dean Foster.
