With all the hoopla surrounding a recent WSJ article which Shall Not Be Named, I noticed there are a lot of adult readers who, for various reasons have avoided/shied away from YA. This is part of a series of posts where I recommend “gateway” novels– novels that will help ease reluctant adult readers into the Behemoth known as the YA world.
Part 5 of the Halloween themed book recommendations. Parts 1-4 about Zombies, Vampires, Ghosts, and Witches can be read here.
All Synopsis taken from Goodreads.
Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her mom, by the cute son of a local police sergeant, and by the eerie voices she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Unfortunately for Bridget, it turns out the voices are demons – and Bridget has the rare ability to banish them back to whatever hell they came from.
Terrified to tell people about her new power, Bridget confides in a local priest who enlists her help in increasingly dangerous cases of demonic possession. But just as she is starting to come to terms with her new power, Bridget receives a startling message from one of the demons. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the demons’ plan before someone close to her winds up dead – or worse, the human vessel of a demon king.
2. Skeleton Man by Joseph Bruchac
Trust your dreams. Both my parents said that. That’s our old way, our Mohawk way. The way of our ancestors. Trust the little voice that speaks to you. That is your speaking. But when those feelings, those dreams, those voices are so confusing, what do you do then?
“Help,” I whisper. “Help.”
I’m not sure who I’m talking to when I say that, but I hope they’re listening.
Ever since Molly woke up one morning and discovered that her parents vanished, she has had to depend on herself to survive — and find the reason for their disappearance.
Social Services has turned her over to the care of a great-uncle, a mysterious man Molly has never met before. Then Molly starts having dreams about the Skeleton Man from a spooky old Mohawk tale her father used to tell her…dreams that are trying to tell her something…dreams that might save her, if only she can understand them.
3. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
This is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss. The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. . . .
This monster, though, is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.
It wants the truth.
4. Halloween Party by R.L. Stine
Don’t listen to the stories they tell you about Fear Street. Wouldn’t you rather explore it yourself…and see if its dark terror and unexplained mysteries are true? You’re not afraid, are you? The invitation arrived in a black-bordered envelope. Inside, the card showed a coffin with the inscription “Reserved For You.” It was perfectly fitting for an all-night Halloween party of Fear Street. But Terry and his girlfriend Niki wondered why they had been invited. They barely knew Justine Cameron, the beautiful and mysterious transfer student who was throwing the party. The party was well under way when the lights went out. That’s to be expected at a spooky Halloween party. But when the lights came back on, there was that boy on the floor with the knife in his back. Just a Halloween prank? Maybe. Maybe not. For Terry and Niki the trick-or-treating has turned to terror. To their horror, they realize that someone at the costume party is dressed to kill!
Something unspeakable is murdering the townspeople of Millingham and only seventeen-year-old Lysander Shore knows what it is. A dark shadow that possesses its victims and forces them into grizzly acts of suicide. Lysander knows because he has seen it and he’s pretty sure it saw him too.
Now he can’t shake the eerie feeling he’s being watched. And when his friends and neighbors begin to die under mysterious circumstances, he knows his only hope is to uncover what the shadow wants.
Lysander’s frantic search for answers leads him to a dark secret. One that traces back to a witch’s brutal torture and execution 350 years before. A secret about himself Lysander never knew. A secret he desperately wishes he could forget.
6. Something Wicked Comes This Way by Ray Bradbury
The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . .and the stuff of nightmare.