Summer Scares!
| The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she though that the fat paycheck meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe and sane. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| Reprieve by James Han Mattson On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize. But as each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe. Also available on Libby as an audiobook. | |
| Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s—a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires. A couple isolate themselves on a remote island in an attempt to recover from their teenage son’s death, when a mysterious young man knocks on their door during a storm… And a man confronts his neighbor when he discovers a strange object in his back yard, only to be drawn into an ever-more dangerous game. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| Jackal by Erin E. Adams As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward, passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the night of the wedding, the newlyweds’ daughter, disappears and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls. With the evil in the forest creeping closer, Liz knows what she must do: find Caroline, or be entirely consumed by the darkness. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| Ring Shout, or, Hunting the Ku Kluxes in the End Times by P. Djèlí Clark In America, demons wear white hoods. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world? Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, the Catherine House school crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world's best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. Among this year's incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline--only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school--in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence--might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Daniel M. Lavery Adapted from the author's "Children Stories Made Horrific" series, a collection of darkly whimsical stories based on classic fairy tales updates familiar favorites with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity and feminist mischief. Featuring retellings of Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and more, The Merry Spinster illuminates the unsuspected and frequently alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| The Hunger by Alma Katsu Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers of the Donner Party to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos, unknowingly propelling them into one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. |