Guess What’s New in Reading

by Marianne Murray-Guess

New & Olde Pages Bookshoppe

This month, with October right around the corner, we’re featuring what we call “Young Adult Spooky” books. Here are a few of our favorites.

Neal Shusterman is an awesome, scary writer. He takes everyday societies and remakes them to be unique.  His newest young adult thriller, “All Better Now,” is about a virus that can give you total happiness – that is, if you survive. Set in the near future, it’s named Crown Royale, and it kills one out of every 25 people. The survivors lose all of their negative feelings and find utter contentment. This creates a rush to find a vaccine while at the same time a movement of recoverees plan ways to spread the virus and create a new society. Follow three very different teens as they find themselves in the middle of this power play that just may change humanity forever.

“The Disappearing Act” by Roxanne Walker (also writing as R.L. Walker.) It’s not just an ordinary, hot, same old summer for Zoe. She works in the family business, a traveling carnival, every year. This summer, the carnival is back but why are Zoe’s friends disappearing? One by one, they go missing. And Zoe feels like she’s being watched. Zoe must tap into her telepathic powers to find out the answer to this mystery. This is just one of many carnival-themed books. Roxanne Walker is a 5th and 6th grade Writing and English Language Arts teacher from Lithopolis, Ohio. 

William Hope Hodgson is a gothic writer and his book, “The House on the Borderland”, was first published in 1908. (History buffs: this is the same era as Edgar Allen Poe.) Two fishermen discover an old journal left by a recluse in an isolated house that describes hallucinations, battles with supernatural creatures, swine-like beings, and a mystical abyss. Horror and science fiction are combined to take the reader on a journey through endless imagination. Hodgson’s writing has been praised by H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell and Terry Pratchett. You don’t want to miss this spooky treat!

“The Nightmare Next Door” by Joel A. Sutherland. Sutherland has written many spooky tales. “The Nightmare Next Door” is one of four of his “Haunted” series. Similar to author Mary Downing Hahn’s books, he writes about kids moving into a haunted house or next to a graveyard. Brother and sister Matt and Sophie are not happy when their family moves away from the country to a cookie-cutter neighborhood in a new development. One house appears interesting, however – an old stone farmhouse with a horse in the pasture. The owners refuse to sell to the developers. But why? The siblings are curious and determined to see what is going on in the house next door. One thing is for sure: something is not quite right. In addition, try one of these: “Field of Screams”, “Ghosts Never Die”, and “Night of the Living Dolls”. The shoppe has several of these in stock.

Alex Scarrow – Life is in upheaval in “Plague Land,” the first book in this young adult series.

Imagine a virus that knows every move that you are going to make. Once it catches up with you, it liquefies your skeleton. Leon and his younger sister Grace are not about to let that happen. They have just moved to London from the U.S. with their mother when tiny bits of news about a deadly outbreak in Africa appear. One week later it has spread all over the world. Be sure and read the rest of the series, 

“Plague Land: No Escape”, and “Plague Land: Reborn”. Warning: you may find it hard to get to sleep at night. Scarrow is also the author of the teen horror book series “TimeRiders”.

Happy Reading!

Reach New & Olde Pages Bookshoppe 

at (937) 832-3022. Located at 856 Union Blvd.,

Englewood, across the street from Kroger. 

Hours 10-6 M-S.