Tales to Keep You Up at Night (Tales to Keep Your Up at Night #1)

Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim.

With an opening that states "DON'T READ THIS BOOK" in spindly scrawl, Poblocki (The Ghost of Graylock) sets the scene for this bone-chilling collection couched in an overarching narrative about a girl seeking to uncover the truth about her missing grandmother. Thirteen interconnected short stories follow bespectacled Amelia Turner-Ingersoll in the aftermath of her grandmother's disappearance. As Amelia, her moms, and her younger brother Winter pack up her presumed dead grandmother's house, Amelia finds what she assumes is an old library book titled Tales to Keep You Up at Night. When she attempts to return it, the librarian informs her that it's not actually a library book. Despite the book's warnings not to read it, Amelia settles down to do just that and, once finished, realizes that the library has long since closed, leaving her alone in the building. Ghosts, witches, and demon cars populate the book's tales, and entries are told from varying perspectives, making for distinct narratives. The novel's framework, which alternates between Amelia's real life and the scary stories' contents, slowly builds tension, intricately weaving classic and supernatural horror elements to deliver an immersive experience drenched in ominous atmosphere. Characters default to white. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)

Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

"Tales to Keep You Up at Night is a delightfully wicked collection of bite-sized scares, with stories that are magical, strange, and downright unsettling—the perfect treat for a young reader looking for a properly spooky read."-Kate Alice Marshall, author of Thirteens and I Am Still Alive

"This book is magnificently frightening! It is this delicious blend of old timey folktales and creepy weirdness that kept me riveted to every single page and then, as promised, kept me up all night. Absolute horror story perfection!"—Ellen Oh, author of Spirit Hunters

"Poblocki is the middle-grade Crypt Keeper, spinning yarns that are devilishly inventive and genuinely unsettling. This is the book to reach for during the witching hour."—Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling author of The Teddies Saga

"Grab a flashlight and a blanket—this lives up to its titular claim... Alternating between Amelia's storyline and the contents of the book she's reading, Poblocki's delightfully constructed offering is somewhere between a literary matryoshka and an ouroboros as the vignettes twine perilously around each other, rewarding close readers and demanding rereads. It includes well-established genre tropes like creepy clowns and being buried alive, making it a fun distillation of elements from crowd pleasers by authors like R.L. Stine and Alvin Schwartz."—Kirkus Reviews

"The novel's framework, which alternates between Amelia's real life and the scary stories' contents, slowly builds tension, intricately weaving classic and supernatural horror elements to deliver an immersive experience drenched in ominous atmosphere."—Publishers Weekly

"... a masterful, hair-raising work, start to finish."—Books to Borrow, Books to Buy