Thematic Reading List: 18 Spooky Mysteries for Middle Grade Readers

Haunted houses, werewolves, monsters, sinister beings. What is lurking in the closet? Where are the voices coming from?

Why is it that we love spooky novels so much? They keep us up all night, sometimes in terror yet sometimes because we can’t stop reading them. And, it’s not just adults who love scary novels. Some of the most reluctant readers gravitate towards them. A good scary novel can not only be entertaining, but it can also teach plot/sequence of events and predicting.

The 18 novels we have included in our list have brave protagonists in challenging and scary situations. While some may not be for the faint of heart, each represents hours of suspense for middle grade readers.
 

	The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls By: Claire Legrand Practically-perfect twelve-year-old Victoria Wright must lie, sneak, and break the rules when her investigation of the disappearance of her best–and only–friend, Lawrence, reveals dark secrets about her town and the orphanage run by the reclusive Mrs. Cavendish.
	Doll Bones By: Holly Black Zach, Alice, and Poppy, friends from a Pennsylvania middle school who have long enjoyed acting out imaginary adventures with dolls and action figures, embark on a real-life quest to Ohio to bury a doll made from the ashes of a dead girl.
	The Graveyard Book  By: Neil Gaiman After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.
	The House with a Clock in its Walls By: John Bellairs A boy goes to live with his magician uncle in a mansion that has a clock hidden in the walls which is ticking off the minutes until doomsday.
	A Monster Calls By: Patrick Ness At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different, ancient, and wild. And it wants something terrible and dangerous from Conor. It wants the truth.
	The Nest By: Kenneth Oppel When a mysterious wasp queen invades his dreams, offering to “fix” Steve’s new baby brother, Steve thinks his prayers have been answered. But, he may be dangerously wrong.
	Unearthly Asylum By: P. J. Bracegirdle When twelve-year-old Joy’s pet frog gets away, she, her brother, and their elusive friend Poppy sneak onto the grounds of the town’s asylum and discover mysteries that only reinforce Joy’s beliefs that there are supernatural forces at work in the town of Spooking.
	The Night Gardener  By: Jonathan Auxier Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.
	Serafina and the Black Cloak By: Robert Beatty In 1899, a twelve-year-old rat catcher on North Carolina’s Biltmore estate teams up with the estate owner’s young nephew to battle a great evil and, in the process, unlocks the puzzle of her past.
	The Shadows  By: Jacqueline West When eleven-year-old Olive and her distracted parents move into an old Victorian mansion, Olive finds herself ensnared in a dark plan involving some mysterious paintings, a trapped and angry nine-year-old boy, and three talking cats.
	The Water Castle  By: Megan Frazer Blakemore Moving into an inherited mansion in Maine with their mother and stroke-afflicted father, three siblings uncover a mystery involving hidden passageways, family rivalries, and healing waters.
	The Wolves in the Walls By: Neil Gaiman Lucy is sure there are wolves living in the walls of her house, although others in her family disagree, and when the wolves come out, the adventure begins.
	Juniper Berry By: M. P. Kozlowsky When eleven-year-old Juniper begins to suspect something is wrong with her mother and father, she and her friend Giles discover they have been selling their souls, pieces at a time, to a silver-tongued creature in a terrifying fairy-tale underworld.
	Have You Met My Ghoulfriend? (Mostly Ghostly #2) By: R. L. Stine Phears, an evil ghost, wants eleven-year-old Max to help him capture the ghosts of two children whose parents once trapped him, and he sends a Berserker Ghoul to possess Max and convince him to obey.
	The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall By: Mary Downing Hahn In the nineteenth century, ten-year-old Florence Crutchfield leaves a London orphanage to live with her great-uncle, great-aunt, and sickly cousin James, but she soon realizes the home has another resident, who means to do her and James harm.
	The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy By: Nikki Loftin In this twist on “Hansel and Gretel,” two middle schoolers find themselves in a new charter school filled with a mysterious abundance of food at mealtimes and sinister teachers up to no good.
	The Inn Between By: Marina Cohen During a long car trip, best friends Quinn and Kara explore the strange and creepy goings-on at a remote Nevada inn when Kara’s family stops for the night.
	The Wednesdays By: Julie Bourbeau In a village where peculiar things happen every Wednesday, one boy must save the town to save himself.