It’s fast approaching that spooky time of year again and, as another sequel to my previous Halloween posts, here is another batch of frightening books for older grade-school readers: 
If you prefer shorter reads, we have many scary story collections, including “Hide and Don’t Seek” by Anica Mrose Rissi and “Don’t Turn Out the Lights,” an eerie anthology tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s classic “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” as well as Ben H. Winters’ poetry collection,”Literally Disturbed,” which includes rhyming tales of zombies, vampires and other unearthly beings.
Renowned children’s author Mary Downing Hahn has also delved into shorter fiction with her first collection, “The Puppet’s Payback and Other Chilling Tales,” from 2020, which features ten chilling tales, many focusing on the supernatural. Also recommended is her novel, “One for Sorrow,” from 2017, is a haunting and resonant story of friendship and vengeful spirits set in Baltimore during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.
Another recent supernatural novel about friendship is John David Anderson’s “Riley’s Ghost,” which centers on seventh-grader Riley Flynn, recently rejected by her best friend and bullied by popular girls, who gets locked in her school after-hours and must contend with the ghosts that haunt 
the empty hallways and classrooms. James Preller’s “Good Night Zombie” shares a similar setup, in which three students — Carter, Esme, and Arnold — are accidentally locked together inside an almost deserted school where a mysterious night janitor waits in the basement, and strange dark shapes shuffle closer outside. “Good Night Zombie” is the first of five books in the Scary Tales series.
In “The Sleepover,” by Michael Regina, a group of boys decide to have a fun night of junk food, prank calls and scary movies to cheer up their friend Matthew after his beloved nanny, Ruby, passes away. But there is something weird about Ruby’s replacement, and Matt begins to think she may actually be a witch from local legend who torments and eats children. Is he just having a hard time dealing with the loss of Ruby? Has he watched too many scary movies? Or are he and his horror-buff friends in for the scariest night of their lives as they come face-to-face with a real monster?
And finally, another book involving an evil witch, J.A. White’s “Nightbooks,” in which young Alex, who loves to write scary stories, is captured by a witch, Natacha, who lives in an enchanted apartment in his building and forces him to tell her a spooky story every night, or else. As the days go by, and Alex begins to run out of stories to tell, he must find a way to escape before it’s too late. Earlier this year, a sequel, “Gravebooks,” was released, with Alex once again encountering Natacha and an even more sinister presence that has been lurking in his dreams.
