Bathtub Reading: Scary Stories

Here are three tales that will send shivers up your spine. One is eerie and magical, one is intense and full of trauma, and one is just plain terrifying.

The Angel’s Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Random House, 2009

Ruiz Zafon creates a gothic, disturbing universe on the ordinary streets of Barcelona. In an abandoned mansion, David, who has survived a troubled childhood, writes stories he imagines about the city’s underworld. But are the tales imagined or real? He begins to wonder when he finds a locked room in his house that contains photos and letters that suggest the house’s previous owner died a strange and mysterious death. About this time, he gets a letter from an editor asking him to write a book, the likes of which has never existed, promising fame and fortune in return. But David as begins to write the book, he realizes there’s a connection between it and the strange and haunting shadows outside his home.

The Last Bridge
Teri Coyne
Ballentine, 2009
The scariness in this novel doesn’t come from monsters or ghosts, but from other people and the damage loved ones can do to your life. Cat Rucker’s world is upended when she learns of her mother’s suicide and must travel home for the first time in a decade to confront a past she wanted only to forget. She finds her mother’s suicide note, written to her. “Cat: He isn’t who you think he is. Mom OXOX.” Who is the “he” Cat’s mother meant to reference? Cat’s abusive father, who is now in a coma? Her brother Jared, named after her mother’s true love? The town coroner, who seems
to know much more about her mother than he should? Or Cat’s one and only love? This is a dark, edgy novel filled with intense family secrets.

Cherry Bomb
J.A. Konrath
Hyperion, 2009
Readers are calling this the best of Konrath’s Jack Daniels series. This story finds the guilt-ridden Jacqueline Daniels, a Chicago cop, at the funeral of a loved one who was killed by a sadistic psychopath that Jack was trying to catch. At the funeral, she takes a call… from said psychopath who is continuing to kill and taunting Jack with her victims. She is barred from taking the case because she’s personally involved, and she winds up on the wrong side of the law in an effort to stop this killer. Konrath blends his signature humor and well-developed characters with terrifying situations, so at turns you’ll howl with laughter and scream in terror, and in the end, you’ll sleep with the light on for a good, long time.