ISO children's/YA/teen horror books

October 18, 2021 12:18 PM

I'm deeply curious about horror written for children, young adults, and teens. Does anyone have any specific recommendations for books?

Following on my spooky reading trend, I would like to read some horror fiction written for younger audiences. To be clear: these are for me (a 35 year old cis woman who doesn't scare particularly easily, but I find excessively gory things stupid).

I'm also just curious what exists, and whether it's any good! My last experience with YA horror was Goosebumps over 2 decades ago, and reading a lot of Stephen King as a teenager.

I've found a few lists online, but I'd love to hear personal experiences (or, curated lists from sources that you'd trust). I'd also be good with meta-commentary (i.e. articles about such books). Thanks!

posted by Paper rabies to Writing & Language (19 answers total)

An author who comes to mind is Robin Jarvis.
posted by readinghippo at 12:24 PM on October 18, 2021

Best answer: Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song is exceptionally good and quite scary. Franny Billingsley's Chime (alas, that horrible cover) is more "spooky fantasy" than horror per se but also very good. Wilder Girls by Rory Power has some very good body horror moments.

Book Riot has a LOT of booklists for YA and middle-grade horror.
posted by Jeanne at 12:27 PM on October 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Kate Alice Marshall! The YA books Rules for Vanishing and Our Last Echoes were some of the scariest things I've ever read, and her middle grade horror novel, Thirteens, was also excellent.
posted by gideonfrog at 12:28 PM on October 18, 2021

Best answer: For kids:
Doll Bones by Holly Black
The Last Apprentice by Joseph Delaney
The Jumbies (and sequels) by Tracey Baptiste
Coraline and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark edited by Alvin Schwartz

For teens:
Daughters unto Devils by Amy Lukavics
Slasher Girls and Monster Boys (an anthology) edited by April Genevieve Tulcholke
Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge
Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

There's a lot more out there, but these are all books that I've read and recommend - different levels of scary...
posted by tangosnail at 12:30 PM on October 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I've also heard that Daniel Kraus's YA horror is excellent and very scary, but I haven't read any.

And I forgot There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins and The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, both of which I loved.
posted by tangosnail at 12:35 PM on October 18, 2021

Best answer: The House with a Clock in Its Walls scared the shit out of me when I was about 8, but I have no idea whether it would seem scare to a grown-up (or even, say, a ten-year-old.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:45 PM on October 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Seconding Doll Bones, I thought it was really nice and a pretty darn good ghost story, never mind that its audience is supposed to be 9 year olds.
posted by phunniemee at 12:46 PM on October 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Technically a Christian book (I found out years later), but The Magic Bicycle is stone cold terrifying. I also found The Dollhouse Murders scary.
posted by 8603 at 12:49 PM on October 18, 2021

Best answer: The House with a Clock in Its Walls scared the shit out of me when I was about 8, but I have no idea whether it would seem scare to a grown-up (or even, say, a ten-year-old.)

You definitely want to look into John Bellairs in general. Equal parts mystery and gothic horror, plus illustrations by Edward Gorey.
posted by LionIndex at 12:55 PM on October 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

I just finished Goldy Moldavsky's The Mary Shelley Club, a YA thriller/horror. I didn't find it creepy at all, more like a book version of a teen slasher movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!
posted by rogerroger at 1:08 PM on October 18, 2021

This doesn’t help if you are looking for more contemporary offerings, but I listened to some Roberta Simpson Brown short stories on audiocassette when I was a kid that stuck with me for YEARS. (I actually did an askmetafilter question some years ago now trying to track them down based on my scraps of memory! Sadly it did not work, thankfully I FINALLY managed to find them with a lucky google search a couple years ago, after probably over 15 years of periodically trying.) The collections I have are The Scariest Stories Ever and Scary Stories for All Ages.

I also read a lot of Lois Duncan when I was a middle schooler/teen. My fave was Down a Dark Hall.
posted by tan_coul at 1:13 PM on October 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

The original Grimm's Fairy Tales that haven't been watered down to inoffensiveness are indeed grim. I thrived on these as a child and love them better as an old.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 2:29 PM on October 18, 2021

I was a fan of F.E.A.R Street and Christopher Pike as a kid; I actually just received the first book of one of the series, Remember Me.
posted by Drowsy Philosopher at 6:09 PM on October 18, 2021

Best answer: Night Gardener by Auxier
Small Spaces by Arden
posted by aetg at 8:14 PM on October 18, 2021

Nightbooks by JA White
posted by aetg at 8:15 PM on October 18, 2021

Seconding Lois Duncan for YA and I think Mary Downing Hahn was the middle grade equivalent from my childhood.
posted by entropyiswinning at 8:26 PM on October 18, 2021

Re: Christopher Pike. I was reading Stephen King and a bunch of other adult horror as a kid, and thought myself too sophisticated for Goosebumps, but I ate up the Christopher Pike books and a few of them have really stuck with me into adulthood. The stories weren't formulaic even if the characters were, a little, and the suspense and creepiness worked.

Reading them as an adult, the stories are still good but the writing is pretty immature!

So a wishy-washy +1 from me on that suggestion.
posted by rhiannonstone at 9:33 PM on October 18, 2021

Strongly recommend Robert Westall; mostly short stories but a few novellas too. The Wheatstone Pond, Yaxley's Cat, and The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral come to mind as longer books, and there are several short story collections. Not all of his stuff is outright horror, but even the stuff that's not tends to have a strong eerie, folk-horror flavour. It's like MR James for teens, tends intensely creepy rather than graphic, and they are still chilling and compelling as an adult reader.
posted by BlueNorther at 4:34 AM on October 19, 2021

Oh, perhaps Jan Mark, too, and also Joan Aiken.
posted by BlueNorther at 4:41 AM on October 19, 2021