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Reading Recs

No Way Out Nightmares: Scary YA Books for Halloween!

From haunted houses to isolated islands, these YA books full of no way out nightmares will have you thinking twice before you go anywhere this Halloween!

Halloween reading wouldn’t be complete without a TERRIFYING haunted house.

For as long as she can remember, her ancestral home at Harrowstone Hall, called Harrow, has haunted Helen’s dreams—and now those dreams have become a waking nightmare. Helen knows that if she is going to survive the year, she needs to uncover the secrets of Harrow. Why is the house built like a labyrinth? What is digging the holes that appear in the woods each night?And why does the house itself seem to be making her sick?

Read more about These Fleeting Shadows

It’s been almost a year since Makani Young came to live with her grandmother and she’s still adjusting to her new life in rural Nebraska. Then, one by one, students at her high school begin to die in a series of gruesome murders, each with increasing and grotesque flair.

As the body count rises and the terror grows closer, can Makani survive the killer’s twisted plan?

Read more about There’s Someone Inside Your House

Bears aren’t the only predators in these woods.
Best friends Neena and Josie spent high school as outsiders, but at least they had each other. Now, with college and a two-thousand-mile separation looming on the horizon, they have one last chance to be together—a three-day hike deep into the woods of the Pisgah National Forest.

Simmering tensions lead to a detour off the trail and straight into a waking nightmare … and then into something far worse. Something that will test them in horrifying ways. 

Read more about The Woods Are Always Watching

High school is hard enough without seeing dead people everywhere. Grab your backpack and prepare to step into St. Clair High School, where life as a medium sends Jake Livingston into the dangerous underworld of the dead and high school becomes a different kind of survival game—one Jake is not sure he can win.

Read more about The Taking of Jake Livingston

Talk about a no-way-out-nightmare! This spine-tingling thriller follows seven horror buffs as their dream trip to a remote Romanian castle turns into a nightmare when they begin to be killed one by one.

Read more about Go Hunt Me

A tropical island full of secrets. Two Victorian ghosts, trapped for eternity. And a seventeen-year-old girl determined not to be next.

And remember, what the island wants, the island gets.

Read more about The Depths

The other orphans say Margot is lucky.   
But it wasn’t luck that made the Suttons rescue Margot from her bleak existence at the group home.  Margot was handpicked to be a companion to their silent, mysterious daughter, Agatha.

Soon, the isolated house begins playing tricks on Margot’s mind, making her question everything she believes about the Suttons . . . and herself. 

Read more about The Companion

Penguin Teen