Library of Doom

Somewhere without an address, behind a door that is never in the same place twice, stands the largest collection of dangerous books ever gathered. Ordinary libraries lend stories. This one imprisons them: volumes that bite, pages that swallow the careless, words that crawl off the paper to hunt whoever reads them aloud. One guardian keeps the shelves shut. He has no name. They call him the Librarian, and when a cursed book escapes or is stolen, he goes out into the world to bring it back before its power is loosed. The Library of Doom is Michael Dahl's shivery corridor of short, illustrated horror-adventures, written for young and reluctant readers and published by Stone Arch Books. Each slim volume is a single breathless case told in cliffhanger chapters, and the shelves keep growing: the founding Library of Doom stories, then Secrets of the Library of Doom, Return to the Library of Doom, and Library of Doom: The Final Chapters. What sets it apart is that here the monster is always a book. The scares are quick, the sentences short, the illustrations high-contrast and lurid, the doorway low. Newcomers should start with the original Library of Doom set and read forward from there; each title stands alone, so any one is a safe first step into the dark.