Horror

“Sating the Thirst of Bloodthirsty Teens”

My love of horror goes a long way back. I used to think it started in my early teens, when I first discovered Stephen King and James Herbert on my mum’s bookshelves. But on reflection, it goes back even further than that, to the fateful day I read Roald Dahl’s The Twits as a small boy. Not horror, as such, but certainly horrific.

I’d never come across a novel so deliciously cruel. Worms in spaghetti. Bird pies. Glass eyes watching from the bottom of your beer. I was hooked, and have been a fan of Dahl’s books ever since. I’ve seen The Twits work its grotesque magic on my own sons, too, while reading it with them at bedtimes.

But back to my mum’s bookshelves. There’s a reason I’d started exploring them. As a young teen in the 90s, my book options were limited. I was raised in army estates abroad, and as much as I loved the library on wheels that dropped by once a week, I’d soon exhausted its supply of Goosebumps and Point Horror novels. After that, it seemed there was nowhere else to go. Not for non-adults, at least. I found myself at the cusp of a chasm, with middle grade horror on one side and adult horror on the other. So I took the leap.

These days, thanks to the YA boom, that chasm isn’t so wide. But it’s still there.

Today’s older children and teens love horror as much as I did. You see it in their hunger for Stranger Things. In their fascination with Backrooms and Momo. In the way they throw themselves into Halloween. And I see it first-hand when I visit schools. Every time I ask the kids filling assembly halls to put their hands up if they like horror, almost every hand shoots up. Children and teens are a bloodthirsty bunch. For who can resist the thrill of being scared while also being safe? That’s the gift of horror.

So where do these readers go when middle grade stops delivering that thrill? There’s an abundance of horror in YA, but while YA can offer the darker, more mature scares teens crave, it also exposes them to real-life horrors – toxic relationships, for example, or addiction and domestic abuse – for which they’re not quite ready.

This is the gap I wanted to fill with Thirst – a folk horror novel that dodges those more adult, real-life horrors but doesn’t skimp on darkness or shocks. I walked a tightrope while writing Thirst, doing my best to serve up genuine, visceral scares that don’t patronise teens, while also avoiding gratuitous violence and fading to black when the need arose. Rather than describe darker moments in gruesome detail, I employed the power of suggestion. Encouraging readers to use their imaginations does wonders for any horror or ghost story. As a fan of both genres, I know that the most chilling scenes take place not on the written page, but in the reader’s mind.

I hope Thirst serves as a stepping stone for teen readers, helping them to cross that chasm between middle grade and YA. Sadly, when it comes to fiction, young teens are a somewhat neglected age group. This is tragic when you bear in mind the fact that it’s during early teens that many people stop reading for pleasure. In light of this, I’d love for Thirst to ultimately become part of a wider trend. We need more teen novels that keep teens reading, so they can continue into adulthood and enjoy the myriad perks of becoming a lifelong reader.

If you’re looking for teen-appropriate horror beyond Thirst, here are a few books in that field that I’ve personally enjoyed. Some are officially upper middle grade (as mentioned, specifically teen books are sadly lacking), but they all sent a shudder or two down my spine, which is as good an indicator as any of some genuine bite.

Bone Jack by Sarah Crowe
The Worlds We Leave Behind by A.F. Harrold and Levi Pinfold
The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes

Wyrdwood by Curtis Jobling
Song of the Saltings by Racheal King
Gloam by Jack Mackay

Thirst
Author: Darren Simpson
Published October 6th, 2026 by Pushkin Children’s Books

About the Book: Nobody talks about the strange happenings in Maimsbury. No one speaks of the hooded figures glimpsed in the woods, nor the children’s game that went so horribly wrong. But most of all, nobody dares whisper their doubts about the river they have worshipped for centuries.

Like everyone in Maimsbury, Gorse is used to the sacrifices made every spring to the River Yeelde. The life of a farm animal – in return for a year of plenty – seems a fair trade. That is, until a tragedy leads Gorse to a blood-curdling discovery.

Because this year is a Brim Year, and after giving so much, the river needs more than an animal’s life to sate its thirst…

About the Author: Darren Simpson is the critically acclaimed author of Scavengers, The Memory Thieves, Furthermoor, and Thirst. His award-winning books have been translated into several languages and he’s been nominated twice for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. He also once won a budgie at school. Darren lives with his wife and sons in Nottingham and loves long walks with headphones, playing the drums, and
reading in bed on rainy Sunday mornings.

Thank you, Darren, for sharing about the horror gap and recommending some titles!

“Scared Safe: How Horror Literature Can Comfort Young Readers”

When people learn what kind of young adult novels I write, I often get the comment, “Oh, I can’t read horror. I’m too scared!” I always respond with, “Oh, me too! I’m so afraid, I’m medicated!” I usually get a confused look in reply, “But . . .you write horror?”

I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense at first glance, but I’ve always loved scary stories, even when I was quite young. My three older brothers usually had Creature Features on, a weekly television broadcast of cult horror movies, and my mother was always reading some gothic horror novel or another, so I was right there asking them all my questions, peeking at the screen from between my fingers. Yes, these things gave me nightmares, but no, that didn’t stop me. After many years of being a horror fan, I began my writing career with a young adult novel about the Latine boogeyman entitled Five Midnights. From that point on, I was hooked. After writing in this genre for over ten years and meeting a lot of other writers and readers, I’ve come to realize that a lot of us are like this: these stories scare us too, but we also find comfort from reading, watching, or listening to tales of the macabre. I have a theory why, at least in my own case.

Like many childhoods of that time, mine had its traumas. I was the fifth of five children, with sixteen years between me and my eldest sibling, and for five of my first eight years my father was dying of ALS. As you can imagine with all that was going on for my fairly large family, I often went unnoticed, quietly sitting in the background as my brother George watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or listening in on conversations about my father’s disease that were not appropriate for my young years. After my father passed, with only two of us kids left at home, my mother turned to alcohol for comfort. Me? I started buying horror comics, reading about dolls that came alive at night and killed their owners, corpses that rose from the grave to exact revenge. I was drawn to these dark tales because they made my difficult life seem bearable, particularly those that featured kids who, like me, had no autonomy, no voice, but when faced with the most unimaginable horrors they managed to triumph in the end. Weird as it was, those stories made me believe that there was hope, because though my young life sucked, at least there weren’t zombies breaking down the front door of our home. I am clearly not alone in this response; in fact, I came to find that it is supported by studies as well.

In his paper entitled, “Scaring away anxiety: Therapeutic avenues for horror fiction to enhance treatment for anxiety symptoms,” behavioral scientist Coltan Scrivner, PhD states, “Horror media may provide a unique avenue for individuals to manage anxiety by offering controlled exposure to fear, opportunities for cognitive engagement, and experiences of mastery over negative emotions.” He goes on to talk about the benefits of “scary play” for juveniles, “Much of human play takes place in the cognitive playground of a fictional world. Through fictional play, people can learn what a particular situation looks like and imagine how they would react and deal with it. As with more physical types of play, cognitive play with fiction can also serve as a rehearsal for negative emotions and how to manage them.” So, horror stories give young readers an opportunity to practice their responses to trauma in a safe and fictional environment.

During a recent interview I was asked how writing horror for teens differs from writing horror for adults. My answer is always the same: hope. When you’re writing for young people, you’re writing for a vulnerable population. You have responsibility toward your readers. With adults, you don’t have to consider audience at all, you just write. And in the case of adult horror, it can be as dark, violent, or disturbing as you’d like. But with young people, I feel that even the darkest stories should end with a certain amount of hope, and, perhaps, agency for the young protagonists. But along the way, the road can be pretty dark: today’s youth can take it.

In any young adult novel, it is partially our job as writers to throw as many roadblocks at our main characters as possible, sometimes in the form of trauma or truly horrific things, because, put simply: conflict makes for a more interesting story. The more conflict, the better. No one wants to read about someone’s perfect life, because I don’t believe anyone actually has one. It would seem empty. I often think about the first time I read the Lord of the Rings. I couldn’t stand the fact that Frodo and Sam continued to encounter unspeakable evil for thousands of pages, and I gnashed my teeth for hours at a time. I was like, “Just let them throw the damn ring into the fire already!” But it kept me turning pages. No one wants to read a version where they’re magically flown to Mount Doom, Frodo doesn’t have an internal battle with evil but rather just tossed it into the lava, middle earth is saved in the first fifteen minutes, and there was much rejoicing. Rather, it is the act of overcoming that elevates a tale to one that we love and reread over and over. And it is these kinds of stories that almost always end with hope.

So, whether or not you are someone who enjoys horror, you will probably encounter a student or other young person who expresses interest in books of the scary persuasion. What I’d like to ask of you, is this: don’t assume about the child is drawn to these kinds of stories because they are receding into darkness, but rather consider that they might be trying to claw their way out of it, and books of this kind help them do just that. Because in the darkness of horror, young readers often find the light they need to face the real world.

I certainly did. And I turned out alright. (Well, more or less. 😉

Published June 17th, 2025 by HarperCollins

About the Book: Fans of You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight and Your Lonely Nights Are Over will love this thrilling YA horror about a string of disappearances and “accidental” drownings in the Hamptons, the changing relationship between two best friends, and their desperate attempt to not be the next victims of a Lovecraftian monster terrorizing the coastline.

Gabi should be thrilled to be visiting his best friend for the summer. But with its mansions, country clubs, and Ruth’s terrible new boyfriend, Frost Thurston, the Hamptons is the last place he wants to be. And then Gabi witnesses a woman being dragged under the ocean by what looks like a tentacle . . .

When no one—not the police or anyone else—seems to care, Gabi starts to wonder if maybe the beachside town’s bad vibes are more real than he thought. As the number of “accidental” deaths begins to climb, the Thurston family name keeps rising to the top. And what’s worse is that all the signs point to something lurking beneath the water—something with a hunger for blood.

Can Gabi figure out how the two are intertwined and put an end to the string of deaths . . . before becoming the water’s next victim?

About the Author: Ann Dávila Cardinal is a writer and part-time bookseller with an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her young adult horror novels include You’ve Awoken Her, Breakup from Hell, and Five Midnights and its sequel, Category Five. Ann lives with her husband in a little house with a creepy basement and is always on the lookout for parts of monstrous creatures floating in the Vermont rivers as Lovecraft wrote about. Visit her online at anndavilacardinal.com. 

Thank you, Ann, for sharing the research behind the need for horror!

“Growing Up and Growing Older”

Adults were kids once.

As a kid, the idea that your parents and grandparents have led a good deal of their lives without you present in it can be a hard thing to grasp. I think that’s part of what makes seeing pictures of the adults in our lives as children so strange and yet so much fun. It’s hard to take a fully-fledged adult (or someone who seems like a fully-fledged adult when you’re young) and think of them as being your age at some point. For many kids, they only have the here and now: This is my mom and she has always been my mom. Who she might be outside of that identity, or before it, can feel a lot like a mystery.

Even more so when there is no evidence for it—no pictures or stories readily available or shared. For example, my own Poppop was (very briefly!) in modeling school and even now, it’s something I can’t wrap my head around. Often, however, it’s not simply a job someone may have had or how they may have looked, but the surprise of an action or a personality trait.

In Finch House, Micah has a very clear perception of Poppop. After all, she should. She’s lived with him her entire life and considers him one of her best friends. He’s also someone who has always been forthcoming in his reasonings about things. Except for when it comes to asking her to leave a curious, unassuming Victorian house alone. In this instance, his behavior shifts into someone she doesn’t recognize because, in a way, Poppop is not someone she recognizes. His own childhood experiences and connection with Finch House have shaped his behavior regarding it, both in the past and in the present. But Micah has no context for his past self, so his behavior makes no sense to her.

Without any insight into who Poppop was or what the house means to him, Micah’s attempts to find and connect with him lead to her following in his footsteps while looking for more information on him and his past, which quickly becomes scary and even a little dangerous. She becomes aware that her present day childhood and his past childhood were set in two very different time periods within very different societies and that his actions, and his silence about his childhood since, reflect that.

Over time there has been a lot of change and progress in many areas of acceptance and equality in society and because change is not a static thing and humans are capable of learning, there will continue to be. Hiding the past from kids, whether it’s actual history or personal or familial history, does a disservice to everyone. Kids deserve to know that their parents or grandparents are and have always been as human as they are. They had friends and played games and teased their siblings…and they also made mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are in the context of a society that looks very different than our current one, but it doesn’t mean they should be ignored or hidden from sight, especially if feelings and minds and hearts have since changed. Just as we have all changed from childhood, so too will the current generation of kids, and it can be nice to know that you aren’t alone in something as monumental as growing up.

Published September 5th, 2023 by Margaret K. McElderry Books

About the Book: Encanto meets Coraline in this spooky middle grade story that deals with family ties, fear of change, and generational trauma as it follows a girl who must convince an old, haunted house to release its hold on her and her family.

Eleven-year-old Micah has no interest in moving out of her grandfather’s house. She loves living with Poppop and their shared hobby of driving around rich neighborhoods to find treasures in others’ trash. To avoid packing, Micah goes for a bike ride and ends up at Finch House, the decrepit Victorian that Poppop says is Off Limits. Except when she gets there, it’s all fixed up and there’s a boy named Theo in the front yard. Surely that means Finch House isn’t Off Limits anymore? But when Poppop finds her there, Micah is only met with his disappointment.

By the next day, Poppop is nowhere to be found. After searching everywhere, Micah’s instincts lead her back to Finch House. But once Theo invites her inside, Micah realizes she can’t leave. And that, with its strange whispers and deep-dark shadows, Finch House isn’t just a house…it’s alive.

Can Micah find a way to convince the house to let her go? Or will she be forced to stay in Finch House forever?

About the Author: Ciera Burch(she/her/hers) is a lifelong writer and ice cream aficionado. She has a BA from American University and an MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared in The American Literary Magazine, Underground, Five Points, Stork, and Blackbird. Her work was also chosen as the 2019 One City One Story read for the Boston Book Festival. While she is originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, DC, with her stuffed animals, plants, and far too many books. Visit Ciera at CieraBurch.com.

Thank you, Ciera, for this look at perspective!