YA Scary Stories

Like to be frightened? Here are some tales guaranteed to keep you up at night!


Compiled by:
Lizzy S.
All the Dead Lie Down

Kyrie McCauley
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mccaule)

Newly orphaned Marin accepts a nanny position for an acclaimed horror writer and her mother's childhood friend, but she soon realizes all is not well at Lovelace House and must unravel its secrets before they consume her.


The Bone Houses

Emily Lloyd-Jones
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lloydjo)

When risen corpses called 'bone houses' threaten Ryn's village because of a decades-old curse, she teams up with a mapmaker named Ellis to solve the mystery of the curse and destroy the bone houses forever.


Broken Lands

Jonathan Maberry
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Maberry)

Ever since her mother's death, Gabriella 'Gutsy' Gomez has spent her days flying under the radar. But when her mother's undead body is returned to her doorstep from the grave and Gutsy witnesses a pack of ravagers digging up Los Muertos--her mother's name for the undead--she realizes that life finds you no matter how hard you try to hide from it.


Dead Flip

Sara Farizan
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Farizan)

Cori and Maz, once inseparable best friends, reunite to solve the mystery of what happened to their other friend Sam--who disappeared five years ago and has now returned, not having aged at all.


The Dead and the Dark

Courtney Gould
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Gould)

When Logan, the adopted daughter of reality television ghosthunters, teams up with Ashley to search for missing teens in Snakebite, Oregon, they find themselves falling for each other as they uncover a hidden evil.


Delicious Monsters

Liselle Sambury
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Sambury)

Told in alternating timelines, Daisy and her mother move into her deceased uncle's mansion, only to find horrors waiting inside, and ten years later, Brittney investigates the mystery behind the Miracle Mansion that turned her mother's life around.


Don't Tell a Soul

Kirsten Miller
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Miller)

Bram moves to the small town of Louth in order to help her uncle start his new inn, but when she discovers a legacy of silenced women tied to her new home, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the town's 'Dead Girl' myths.


The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror

Tori Bovalino
- Editor
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Gatheri)

A cemetery full of the restless dead. A town so wicked it has already burned twice, with the breath of the third fire looming. A rural, isolated bridge with a terrifying monster waiting for the completion of its summoning ritual. A lake that allows the drowned to return, though they have been changed by the claws of death. These are the shadowed, liminal spaces where the curses and monsters lurk, refusing to be forgotten.


Hell Followed with Us

Andrew Joseph White
(Young Adult Fiction - Y White)

Benji, a trans boy, is on the run from the cult that raised him--the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can't get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center. Their leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji's darkest secret: the cult's bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.


Holly Horror

Michelle Jabès Corpora
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Corpora)

When Evie moves with her mother and brother to a new home known by locals as the Horror House, where a teen mysteriously vanished without a trace many years ago, she becomes haunted by a terrifying bonneted specter.


Horrid

Katrina Leno
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Leno)

Following her father's sudden death, Jane and her mother are forced to move to the old North house in Maine, where Jane uncovers her family's disturbing secrets.


House of Hollow

Krystal Sutherland
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Sutherl)

Something happened to Iris Hollow and her two older sisters Grey and Vivi when they were children, something they can't quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. When Grey goes missing under suspicious circumstances, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.


I Shall Awaken

Kateřina Šardická
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Sardick)

 Twelve years ago, four children suddenly disappeared without trace. Now during the winter solstice, three of them returned out of nowhere as teenagers with no memory of what happened to them. Astrid, Tom and Sonja have to unite to face the prejudice of the villagers and to find out, what happened to them and where the fourth missing child is--Astrid's brother Max.


The Memory Eater

Rebecca Mahoney
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mahoney)

For generations, a monster called the Memory Eater has lived in the caves of Whistler Beach, Maine, surviving off the unhappy memories of those who want to forget. And for generations, the Harlows have been in charge of keeping her locked up--and keeping her fed. Alana Harlow inherits the family business, but there's something she doesn't know: the strange gaps in her memory aren't from an accident. Her memories have been eaten. And with them, she's lost the knowledge of how to keep the monster contained.


Monstrous

Jessica Lewis
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lewis)

When Latavia is presented as a human sacrifice to an ancient beast, she is determined to do whatever it takes to survive--even if that includes making a deal with the monster and endangering her crush and family.


Not Good for Maidens

Tori Bovalino
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Bovalin)

Beneath the streets of York, the goblin market calls to the Wickett women--the family of witches that tends to its victims. Knowing the dangers, they never entered the market--until May Wickett fell for a goblin girl, accepted her invitation, and became inextricably tied to the world her family tried to protect her from. But everything is a haunting temptation for any human who manages to find their way in. And if Lou isn't careful, she could end up losing herself to the market, too.


The Perfect Place to Die

Bryce Moore
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Moore)

Zuretta Palmer travels to Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair to find her missing sister, but when the police and the Pinkertons refuse to help her, Zuretta begins her own investigation by becoming a maid at the notorious Castle.


The Restless Dark

Erica Waters
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Water)

The Cloudkiss Killer is dead. Now a true-crime podcast is hosting a contest to find his bones. Lucy was almost the serial killers final victim. Carolina is a true-crime fan who fears her own rage. Maggie is a psychology student with a little too much to hide. But there are more than bones hiding in the shadows... sometimes the darkness inside is more frightening than anything the dead leave behind.


Rules for Vanishing

Kate Alice Marshall
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Marshal)

Sara's sister disappeared one year ago--and only Sara knows where she is. Becca went to find the ghost of Lucy Gallows and is trapped on the road that leads to her. In the sleepy town of Briar Glen, Lucy's road is nothing more than local lore, but Sara knows it's real, and she's going to find it.


The Sacrifice Box

Martin Stewart
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Stewart)

In the summer of 1982, five friends discover an ancient stone box hidden deep in the woods. They seal inside of it treasured objects from their childhoods, and they make a vow: Never come to the box alone. Never open it after dark. Never take back your sacrifice. Four years later, a series of strange and terrifying events begin to unfold. Someone broke the rules of the box, and now everyone has to pay.


Sawkill Girls

Claire Legrand
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Legrand)

From the New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn comes a breathtaking and spine-tingling novel about three teenage girls who face off against an insidious monster that preys upon young women.


She is a Haunting

Trang Thanh Tran
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Tran)

Jade Nguyen is spending the summer in Vietnam at the French colonial house her estranged father is fixing up as a vacation rental, but unbeknownst to her family, the house and its ghosts have other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don't belong. And at night Jade can't ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don't eat.


The Undead Truth of Us

Britney S. Lewis
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Lewis)

After her mother's sudden death, sixteen-year-old dancer Zharie Young begins seeing zombies, and when she meets an undead boy, he helps her understand how love can change someone--for good or for dead.


The Weight of Blood

Tiffany D. Jackson
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Jackson)

An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father. After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret one that will cost them all their lives.


Wilder Girls

Rory Power
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Power)

It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her. It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign.


Within These Wicked Walls

Lauren Blackwood
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Blackwo)

Andromeda is a debtera -- an exorcist hired to cleanse households of the Evil Eye. She would be hired, that is, if her mentor hadn't thrown her out before she could earn her license. Now her only hope of steady work is to find a patron -- a rich, well-connected individual who will vouch for her abilities. When a young heir named Magnus Rochester reaches out to hire her, Andromeda takes the job without question. But she quickly realizes this is a job like no other, with horrifying manifestations at every turn, and that Magnus is hiding far more than she has been trained for.


Graphic Novels
Abbott

Saladin Ahmed
(Graphic Novels - GN Ahmed Abbott)

While investigating police brutality and corruption in 1970s Detroit, journalist Elena Abbott uncovers supernatural forces being controlled by a secret society of the city's elite.


Basketful of Heads

Joe Hill
(Graphic Novels - GN Hill Basketful Of Heads)

June Branch visits her boyfriend, Liam, on Brody Island for a relaxing last weekend of summer. After an escaped group of criminals breaks into the house, Liam is taken by them. June grabs a strange Viking axe and flees from the intruders.


The Last Halloween Vol. 1: Children

Abby Howard
(Graphic Novels - GN Last Halloween v. 1)

In a gothic adventure at the end of the world, a ten-year-old girl and a motley crew of ghouls must stop an invading horde of monsters on a fateful Halloween night.


Through the Woods

Emily Carroll
(Graphic Novels - GN Carroll Through The Woods)

A collection of five spine-tingling short stories.