By title

By author

Micol Ostow

• The Haunting of Hill House
• Shirley Jackson

• “The ne plus ultimate haunted house story, I like to think of Amity‘s Gwen as sort of a modern spin on Eleanor, a young woman seeing and experiencing ghostly things, whose mind and perceptions can’t be trusted.”

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle
• Shirley Jackson

• “A slow-burner filled with atmosphere. Merricat is the platonic ideal of an unreliable narrator.”

• The Shining
• Stephen King

• “A suggestible man, prone to violence, isolated in a hotel that exerts evil force over his will… Jack Torrance is to Amity‘s Connor as Hill House‘s Eleanor is to Gwen.”

• Tighter
• Adele Griffin

• “A modern take on The Turn of the Screw, Griffin draws from chilling source material and makes it her own for today’s teen readers.”

• To Die For
• Joyce Maynard

• “A dark and twisty thriller (the movie’s great, too) that serves up multiple POV’s on a platter. I spent a lot of time poring over the many distinct voices of that book.”

• The Maddaddam trilogy
• Margaret Atwood

• “Epic and sprawling, boldly visionary, and still she manages to tie all of her narrative threads together by the series’ conclusion. To spend ten minutes in that woman’s head!”

• Dangerous Girls
• Abigail Haas

• “Pacing, pacing, pacing. Totally un-put-downable.”

• The Amityville Horror
• Jay Anson

• “(That one probably goes without saying.)”

• We Were Liars
• E.Lockhart

• “The pages turn and the ending twists!”

Michael Buckley

• The Outsiders
• S.E. Hinton

• A timeless story of outcasts versus the privileged. Exciting and heartbreaking — Hinton should be applauded for understanding the mind of a guy so well.

• All Star Superman Books 1 and 2
• Frank Quitely

• Lex Luthor finally finds a way to kill Superman and the Big Blue Boy Scout prepares for his death with a shocking ending no one could have seen.

• Lord of the Flies
• William Golding

• A ship full of children from an all boys' school crashes on the beach of a deserted island. Unfortunately, it isn't long before the kids stop working together and break up into tribes with dark and deadly results.

• Pinocchio
• Carlo Collodi

• Most people have seen the movie but few have read the book and that’s a shame. Pinocchio is a walking nightmare and hilarious.

• The Graveyard Book
• Neil Gaiman

• An adaptation of the Jungle Book but instead of a boy being raised by wolves, he's reared by ghosts in an abandoned cemetery. It's chilling and dark, yet a powerful lesson on how a boy becomes a man.

Erik P. Kraft

• Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre
• Lovecraft's grocery lists are enough to make modern day vampires wet their pants.
• The Cut-ups Cut Loose
• Features Lamar J. Spurgle and his repulsive dog Bessie!
• Dooley and the Snortsnoot
• Picture book about a giant who isn't giant yet. Also, a Snortsnoot.
• Welcome to the Monkey House

• I loved no writer more than Kurt Vonnegut as a teen. His short stories might be an easy entry for the uninitiated.

• The Complete Saki
• Maybe not for everyone (subversive Victorian short stories, as if being subversive around Victorians is hard), but worth the price of admission for "The Lumber-Room" and "Reginald's Choir Treat."

Peter Brown

• I can't overemphasize how perfectly James Marshall balances sweetness and absurdity in these stories.

• Everyone Poops

• Everyone Poops is a continuous source of 'inspiration.

• James and the Giant Peach

• Witty dialogue, fantastical adventure and a wonderfully dark sense of humor seem to effortlessly flow from Roald Dahl's pen.

• This series is perhaps the most unique, thoughtful, and provocative fantasy I’ve ever read.

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

• I was mesmerized by the way Verne describes the science and logic of the world in which this story takes place.

Dan Gutman

• The Invention of Hugo Cabret

• Genius. The Sgt. Pepper of children's books.

• Hatchet

• Still the best survival story.

• Ball Four

• This is the book that turned me on to reading. For the first time, somebody wrote like they were having a conversation with me.

• Yertle the Turtle

• Or anything by Dr. Seuss. Can’t beat it.

• Mad Magazine

• Without it, all intelligent life on Earth would have ceased to exist.