Here are 97 books that Spirit Week fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. I’m a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though I’m well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other side—better, stronger, smarter.
If you really want to be scared, Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon is the book for you.
This story takes the hide and seek game and gives it a creepy twist. The book opens when Justin goes to see his friend Zee, who mysteriously disappeared a year earlier and is now back. But nothing is the same… Anyone who plays the game disappears, one by one, taken by the mysterious Seeker. This book had me sleeping with the light on.
If you have a kid reader who truly loves to be scared, Hide and Seeker is the perfect book.
One of our most iconic childhood games receives a creepy twist as it becomes the gateway to a nightmare world.
I went up the hill, the hill was muddy, stomped my toe and made it bloody, should I wash it?Justin knows that something is wrong with his best friend.Zee went missing for a year. And when he came back, he was . . . different. Nobody knows what happened to him. At Zee's welcome home party, Justin and the neighborhood crew play Hide and Seek. But it goes wrong. Very wrong.One by one, everyone who plays the game disappears, pulled…
I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. I’m a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though I’m well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other side—better, stronger, smarter.
Whenever someone asks me to recommend a scary book for kids, I instantly think of Lindsay Currie’s books. This author knows just how to write a scary story for kids without making it gory.
In It Found Us, twelve-year-old Hazel loves a good mystery, so when she hears that her brother Den plans to go to the cemetery for a game of hide and seek, she tags along. Only the game ends with her brother’s friend Everett missing, and now Den and Hazel try to find him before it’s too late… I loved Hazel, the girl detective in the book, whose sleuthing takes her to a Chicago cemetery, and exploring history.
Think Scooby Doo meets Goosebumps—your kid will love this scary mystery and will want to check out all of Lindsay Currie’s books.
From the author of Scritch Scratch and The Girl in White comes a new spooky mystery about a girl detective who must decode a series of ominous clues tied to a century-old tragedy to find a missing teenager before it's too late…
Twelve-year-old Hazel Woods has always had an unusual knack for sleuthing. Some may call it snooping, but all she really wants is to solve mysteries around town. So, when she not-so-accidentally overhears her brother Den planning to sneak into the cemetery at night for an epic game of hide-and-seek, she decides to secretly tag along. This seems like…
I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. I’m a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though I’m well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other side—better, stronger, smarter.
I love a good short story, especially when it’s written for kids.
In More Tales to Keep You Up at Night, main character Gilbert finds audio tapes after his brother is injured in a mysterious accident, and starts to listen to them. Gilbert soon figures out that the stories are connected to his family, and that he’ll have to listen to all of them to save his brother…
Perfect for readers of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And as you probably can tell from the title, there is a first book by the same author. Dan Poblocki is one of those authors who just know how to tell a scary story for the middle-grade audience.
From the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Magic Misfits comes a spectacularly creepy follow-up to Tales to Keep You Up at Night that will keep you up way past bedtime.
Perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark!
Gilbert is visiting his injured brother, Ant, in the hospital, when he sees a shadowed figure leave behind a satchel filled with old cassette tapes. Despite a strange, garbled voicemail telling him "Don't listen to the tapes," Gilbert can't resist playing them and listening to the chilling stories they reveal: tales of cursed seashells,…
Twelve-year-old supernatural sleuth Dotty Morgan becomes embroiled in an ancient conflict between rival Japanese factions, and the timing couldn't be worse. A new girl in town creates jealousy between Dotty and her girlfriend, and her mother invites a nightmare houseguest to stay with them. She must put the drama aside…
I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. I’m a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though I’m well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other side—better, stronger, smarter.
This book starts with a prank gone wrong, when Rafa and his friend steal the school slushy machine and get busted. As punishment, Rafa is sent to Ranch Espanto in New Mexico for the summer.
Rafa makes a friend in Jennie, but his work at the ranch keeps being sabotaged… He has to solve the (supernatural) mystery of the ranch, and in the end the book has a cool plot twist to satisfy mystery readers like myself. Aside from the strong plot, this book also covers tougher topics affecting these kids, giving it depth and heart.
I loved the New Mexico feel of the book, and appreciated how there was a mystery as well as supernatural (and magical realism) elements. The Ghosts of Rancho Espanto is the perfect book for kids who like a blend of genres, not simply another ghost story.
Sometimes parents are creative when they punish you. But not Rafael's dad. He doesn't bother with a traditional punishment when he finds out Rafael and his friends tried to steal a slushie machine from the school cafeteria. He skips right over creative, too. He blasts all the way to completely unhinged and bonkers.
That's how Rafael ends up on a ranch in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico, thousands of miles from home in Miami. He's content to keep his head down and do as he's told, but his work is inexplicably sabotaged by a strangely familiar man, one with the…
I have turned my childhood fascination with Hollywood into an academic career. For four decades I have explored, not least through extensive archival research, all aspects of the history of American cinema – films, filmmakers, studios, production histories, marketing campaigns, critical reception, audiences. Among other books, I have published three volumes in the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series (on Buster Keaton’sThe Generaland Stanley Kubrick’sDr. Strangeloveand2001: A Space Odyssey). I have focused on some of the most highly acclaimed, most commercially successful, most ardently loved, and most influential movies of all time. The starting point for my work is always my passionate engagement with particular movies.
Published in 2016, four years after George Lucas had sold Lucasfilm Ltd., and with it the Star Wars franchise, to Disney, this is a worthy successor to Dale Pollock’s groundbreaking biography (first published in 1983 and last updated in 1999).
Brian Jay Jones brings that book’s story of an extraordinary filmmaker, who showed surprisingly little interest in movies during his early youth and then spent several years focusing on experimental short films before changing Hollywood with a series of huge blockbusters and newly formed businesses, to what appears to be its conclusion: since 2012 Lucas has largely withdrawn from filmmaking.
The book is not only very informative but in places, especially in the last chapter, also quite moving.
George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones is the first comprehensive telling of the story of the iconic filmmaker and the building of his film empire, as well as of his enormous impact on cinema. At once a biography, a business manual, and a film history, George Lucas will, for the first time explore the life and work of a fiercely independent writer/director/producer who became one of the most influential filmmakers and cultural icons - a true game changer.
On May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining, independent science fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theatres. Its distributor -…
I’ve always had a passion for cinema, especially gritty British
productions of the 1940s and 50s. The voices of Kathleen Harrison,
Robert Beatty, Kenneth More, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Warner, and Susan Shaw
can be heard nightly radiating from my TV. I’m also a huge fan of radio,
in particular classic BBC shows. As a biographer, I’m known for shining
a light on personalities of yesteryear – those we might recognize by
name and face but know little about. My recent books include
biographies on Erich Honecker (OK, he wasn’t a movie star), Jack Hawkins,
and David Tomlinson (they were).
Recently, during a visit to Filmstaden studios near Stockholm (yes, where Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman worked) I was given a copy of this book. It is, without a doubt, the definitive biography of Hitchcock, with a thrilling opening on his life in Britain and formative years.
A fresh and definitive portrait of the Master of Suspense by acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan Full of fresh revelations, dark humour and cliff hanging suspense, this new biography of Alfred Hitchcock follows his life from its humble beginnings, as the son of an East End greengrocer, through an extraordinary career in which his films set new standards for cinematic invention, to his death as a Hollywood legend in Beverley Hills. * Gives a uniquely comprehensive and balanced view of Hitchcock's life, uncovering details not just of his work but also his personal life, and with an insight into how they…
Worcester Glendenis is a 12-year-old wannabe private detective. He models himself on his hero, the fictional private eye Philip Marlowe, of course without the booze, cigarettes, and violence. After all, he is only twelve.
He's a likable and smart kid with two pesky 7-year-old twin sisters, and a Mum and…
Tyler Schwanke is a writer and a filmmaker. He holds an MFA from Hamline University, and his short stories have been widely published in online journals and literary magazines, including Chaotic Merge, Havik, and Fiction Southeast. He is also a graduate of the New York Film Academy and Minnesota State University Moorhead, where he was awarded a Minnesota Film and TV Grant. Several of his award-winning short films have played at festivals across the country. Tyler lives in the Minneapolis with his wife and their dog. Breaking In is his debut novel.
A sci-fi space opera that’s told like a documentary film.
This was the first book (but certainly not the last) that ever made me jealous I didn’t write, and inspired countless hours of me trying to duplicate.
Set in an alternate 1986 where silent films still reign and using various forms (reality tv, movie, celebrity rags, audio transcripts) this is a genre-bending collective gorgeously told and seriously underread.
Severin Unck is the headstrong young daughter of a world famous film director. She has inherited her father's love of the big screen but not his exuberant gothic style of filmmaking. Instead, Severin makes documentaries, artful and passionate and even rather brave - for she is a realist in a fantastic alternate universe, in which Hollywood occupies the moon, Mars is rife with lawless saloons, and the solar system contains all manner of creatures, cults and colonies. For Severin's latest project she leads her crew to the watery planet of Venus to investigate the disappearance of a diving colony there.…
Hello. My name is Mike Russell. I write books (novels, short story collections and novellas) and make visual art (mostly paintings, occasionally sculptures). I love art and books that are surreal and magical because that is the way life seems to me, and I love art and books that are mind-expanding because we need to expand our minds to perceive just how surreal and magical life is. My books have been described as strange fiction, weird fiction, surrealism, magic realism, fantasy fiction… but I just like to call them Strange Books.
Discovering the art of Alejandro Jodorowsky helped me to remove limitations from my own art. It was a joy to discover his work and it was a further joy to discover that his life has been just as uncompromising, surreal, and magical as his art. He has hung out with circus people, shamans, great artists (Marcel Marceau, Leonora Carrington, Jean Giraud… the list goes on). His novels, autobiographies, comic books, movies, and pictures are all fantastic.
Not a traditional autobiography composed of a chronological recounting of memories, Dance of Realityrepaints events from Jodorowsky's life from the perspective of an unleashed imagination. Like the psychomagic and metagenealogy therapies he created, this autobiography exposes the mythic models and family templates upon which the events of everyday life are founded. It reveals the development of Jodorowsky's realization that all problems are rooted in the family tree and explains, through vivid examples from his own life, particularly interactions with his father and mother, how the individual's road to true fulfilment means casting off the phantoms projected by parents on their…
I have long been an ardent admirer and student of works that transgress boundaries and extend the frontiers of literature. A blurring and subversion of genres, or fusion of forms and modalities, arouses my imagination and inspires me to see differently, to read differently, to travel to places within myself that otherwise might remain undiscovered and uncharted. To me, writing is an ongoing experiment, a series of progressions and adventures which ask me to stay open, supple, and curious. There is no set formula—each book demands its own form, and both as writer and reader, I most desire to be engaged in what is a solitary ritual of interaction.
While this book is a bio-memoir, I included it on my list as a correspondent homage to the cinematic shaman of twisted mysteries, David Lynch. For the past forty plus years, Lynch has dreamscaped a long day’s journey into night, taking audiences on a hallucinated tour through the underworld of their own splintered psyche. Lynch’s oeuvre, a steam-punk Frankenstein of interchangeable parts, speaks to the savvy and glee of a mad scientist at play, while his blending of the eternal with American pop has given us a surrealistic soap opera with an eye toward the numinous. Written in alternating chapters, between Lynch and McKenna, this book is a must-read for fans of Lynch, but beyond that, if you are a fan and lover of cinema, creative process, and following your bliss, Room to Dreamstrikes those chords with a down-to-earth immediacy. It is, in essence, one man’s multi-layered valentine…
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unprecedented look into the personal and creative life of the visionary auteur David Lynch, through his own words and those of his closest colleagues, friends, and family
“Insightful . . . an impressively industrious and comprehensive account of Lynch’s career.”—The New York Times Book Review
In this unique hybrid of biography and memoir, David Lynch opens up for the first time about a life lived in pursuit of his singular vision, and the many heartaches and struggles he’s faced to bring his unorthodox projects to fruition. Lynch’s lyrical, intimate, and unfiltered personal reflections riff…
Shawn Levy is the author of 11 books of biography and pop culture history, including The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, Paul Newman: A Life, Rat Pack Confidential, and Ready, Steady, Go! The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London. He was the longtime film critic of The Oregonian newspaper and KGW-TV in his beloved home city of Portland. He has written a history of the women pioneers of standup comedy which will be published by Doubleday in 2022 and at work on a podcast about the dark connections of politics and show business.
Before he became a writer of potboiler novels and true-crime journalism, Dominick Dunne was a film and television producer and a social butterfly who also happened also to be an avid amateur photographer. This memoir of his Hollywood days, which resulted in a crash-and-burn from which he emerged as a writer, is filled with intimate, candid images of such friends (not all faithful) as Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, as well, of course, as Dunne and his family. There are dreamy and even eye-popping tales throughout, and if you're at all familiar with Dunne's books or magazine writing, you'll marvel at how so much of it so neatly dovetails with the life he actually lived and, thankfully, captured on film and in these frank and candid pages.
Mesmerizing, revelatory text combines with more than two hundred photographs -- most of them taken by the author -- in a startling illustrated memoir that will both astonish and move you.
When Dominick Dunne lived and worked in Hollywood, he had it all: a beautiful family, a glamorous career, and the friendship of the talented and powerful. He also had a camera and loved to take pictures. These photographs, which Dunne carefully preserved in more than a dozen leatherbound scrapbooks -- along with invitations, telegrams, personal notes, and other memorabilia -- record the parties, the glittering receptions, the society weddings,…
