Kids vs Vampires: Round 1, Fight!

Okay, so technically this book came out August 30th, not in September, but I’m including it, darn it. Because how cute is this collection of scary stories?! As you might guess, these tales of monsters and monstrous things are meant to help the unwary child who’s stumbled into a vampire’s nest make it out again without becoming a blood-flavored Capri Sun. Tell a vampire one good scary story every night and you might just buy yourself time to escape! Or so is the premise of Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires, with its collection of stories about everything from ghosts and werewolves to a haunted mannequin and…a killer phone? So grab your copy, get to reading, and you just might make it till morning.

If you are unfamiliar with the Rick Riordan Presents line of middle grade books, I highly recommend checking out this fantastically diverse collection of fantasy and sci-fi novels, more than a few of which definitely count as horror! In Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting, twelve-year-old Serwa is the descendent of generations of slayers tasked with hunting the Adze, shapeshifting vampires that posses the minds of their victims. But when her parents set out on a dangerous hunt to track down the obayifo who destroyed their home, rather than getting to hunt along side them, Serwa finds herself parked in some small town in Maryland with her aunt and cousin to live a boringly ordinary life until her parents get back. But when an adze turns up in Serwa’s new school, she’s suddenly on a hunt of her own, trying to turn her classmates in to monster hunters before everyone she knows becomes a vampire’s dinner.

Oops, not me sneaking a third new release into this week’s newsletter, but yes! The Vanquishers does indeed come out tomorrow, so be sure to add it to your list. Malika “Boog” Wilson is growing up in a world that has finally eradicated vampires after years of being hunted and besieged by the undead. They were wiped out by the Vanquishers, vampire hunters who Boog and her friends would give anything to be like, even though there are no more vampires to fight. In fact, most of her classmates’ families have given up on anti-vampire measures altogether, no longer relying on the precautions that prior generations counted on to survive. Except, that is, Boog’s parents, who still insist on early curfews (well before sunset) and wreaths of garlic. It’s embarrassing! But when one of her friends goes missing, Boog starts to reconsidered her parent’s insistence on outdated practices, and very seriously consider the possibility that vampires may not be as extinct as she’d been lead to believe.

Coming out at the end of this month is Vampiric Vacation, the second book in Kiersten White’s delightful Sinister Summer series! Dracula fans add this one to your list, because aside from featuring some familiar faces (sort of), it sounds honestly adorable and I can’t wait. Following the events of first book, Wretched Waterpark, the Sinister-Winterbottom siblings are off to the next stop on their odd (very odd) summer adventure: the Sanguine Spa. The owners, Mina and her sister Lucy (who has some unusual but definitely still human and not at all vampiric qualities) are watched over by their ominous guardian The Count, who helps them to manage the eerie spa. Suspicious that the spa might have something to do with their missing parents, the siblings set out to investigate under the guise of a scavenger hunt. But when Wil starts manifesting some very unsettling symptoms of a condition that starts with a V, the twins quickly realize that something even stranger than expected might be happening inside the walls of the Sanguine Spa.