12Monsters

available as a Sails Book

The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

"Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic."

Genre: Literary fiction; Modern classics; Psychological fiction

Subjects: Mental illness, Nervous breakdown, Suicidal behavior, Depression

available as a Sails audioBook

Dread Nation

by Justina Ireland

"Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations. But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems."

Genre: Historical fantasy; Horror

Subjects: Friendship, Love, Missing persons, Oppression (Psychology), Racism, Schools, Slavery, Zombies

Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

"It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy."

Genre: Transgressive fiction

Subjects: Boxers (Sports), Fist fights, Insomnia, Love triangles, Mental illnesses, Millennialism, Secret societies, Support groups, Terrorism, Violence

Go Ask Alice

by Beatrice Sparks (as "Anonymous")

"It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her."

Genre: Diary novels; First person narratives; Realistic fiction

Subjects: Drug abuse, Drug addiction, Fifteen-year-old girls

sails e-book

rbdigital e-audiobook

The Island of Doctor Moreau

by H.G. Wells

"When Edward Prendick is shipwrecked on a mysterious island in the South Pacific, he meets the infamous Dr. Moreau, a physiologist who was forced to leave England because of his repulsive experiments on animals. On the island, screams echo from the laboratory in the middle of the night, and strange beasts prowl the jungle. Prendick discovers that the doctor is still performing horrific experiments, trying to turn animals into human beings. Terrified, Prendick wants to escape but soon finds himself seeking justice for the half-human subjects of Dr. Moreau's experiments. These experiences force Prendick to consider the relationship between science and ethics. "

Genre: Horror; Horror classics; Science fiction

Subjects: Animal experimentation, Human/animal relationships, Islands, Mad scientist (Concept), Physicians, Scientists, Shipwrecks, Survival

sora king e-books/audiobooks

rbdigital e-audiobook

Any 1 fiction book of Stephen King

List of his books

sails king books/audiobooks

sails king e-books/audiobooks

bpl king e-books/audiobooks

Monday's Not Coming

by Tiffany D. Jackson

"Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried. When she doesn’t show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn’t just leave her to endure tests and bullies alone. Not after last year’s rumors and not with her grades on the line. Now Claudia needs her best—and only—friend more than ever. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is even less help.As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she’s gone?"

Genre: Mysteries; Realistic fiction

Subjects: Bullying and bullies, Child abuse, Dyslexia, Growing up, Loss (Psychology), Missing persons, Schools, Violence

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

"A reunion with two childhood friends--Ruth and Tommy--draws Kath and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into the supposedly idyllic years of their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the serene English countryside, and a dramatic confrontation with the truth about their childhoods and about their lives in the present."

Genre: Literary fiction; Science fiction

Subjects: Clones and cloning, Donation of organs, tissues, etc., Ethics, Friendship, Memories, Organ donors, Private schools, Secrets

Pet

by Akwaeke Emezi

"Pet is here to hunt a monster. Are you brave enough to look? There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question–How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?"

Genre: Fantasy Fiction; Allegories

Subjects: Injustice, Monster hunters, Monsters, Near future, Quests, Selective mutism, Teenage girls, Utopias

sails e-audiobook

bpl e-audiobook

Any 5 short stories from Edgar Allen Poe

List of his stories

available as sails e-books/audiobooks

sora e-book 2

available as sails books

available as BPL e-books/audiobooks

Sadie

by Courtney Summers

"A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she's left behind. And an ending you won't be able to stop talking about.Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water. But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him. When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late. Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page."

Genre: Thrillers and suspense; Multiple perspectives

Subjects: Investigative journalism, Missing girls, Murder investigation, Podcasts, Sisters, Small towns, Stuttering, Teenage girls

Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

"Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming."

Genre: Psychological suspense

Subjects: Self-harm, Deception, Drug abuse, Girl murder victims, Half-sisters, Murder investigation, Poisoning, Secrets, Self-destructive behavior

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson

"Idealistic young scientist Henry Jekyll struggles to unlock the secrets of the soul. Testing chemicals in his lab, he drinks a mixture he hopes will isolate - and eliminate - human evil. Instead it unleashes the dark forces within him, transforming him into the hideous and murderous Mr. Hyde.The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dramatically brings to life a science-fiction case study of the nature of good and evil and the duality that can exist within one person. Resonant with psychological perception and ethical insight, the work has literary roots in Dostoevsky's "The Double" and Crime and Punishment. Today Stevenson's novella is recognized as an incisive study of Victorian morality and sexual repression, as well as a great thriller."

Genre: Classics; Gothic fiction; Horror

Subjects: Dissociative identity disorder, Good and evil, Human experimentation in medicine, Mad scientist (Concept), Personal conduct, Physicians, Scientists, Secret identity, Secrets, Self medication, Self-destructive behavior, Sin

available as a Sails Book

hoopla e-book 2

Graphic Novels

Goodreads

A Monster Calls

by Patrick Ness, Jim Kay, and Siobhan Dowd

"An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. 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 one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth."

Genre: Magical realism

Subjects: Children of people with cancer, Loss (Psychology), Monsters, Nightmares, Schools, Self-fulfillment, Single-parent families, Thirteen-year-old boys

sails e-book

Bitter Root, Vol. 1: Family Business

by David F. Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene

"In the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance is in full swing, and only the Sangerye Family, once known as the greatest monster hunters of all time, can save New York -- and the world -- from the supernatural forces threatening to destroy humanity. But those days are fading and the once-great family that specialized in curing the souls of those infected by racism and hate has been torn apart by tragedies and conflicting moral codes. A terrible tragedy has claimed most of the family, leaving the surviving cousins divided between by the desire to cure monsters or to kill them; they must heal the wounds of the past and move beyond their differences ... or sit back and watch a force of unimaginable evil ravage the human race."

Genre: Horror comics; Historical fiction; Paranormal fiction; Comics and Graphic novels

Subjects: Harlem Renaissance, Monsters, Racism, Good and evil, Nineteen twenties

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case

"Throughout the 1980s, the highest priority of Seattle-area police was the apprehension of the Green River Killer, the man responsible for the murders of dozens of women, but in 1990, with the body count numbering at least forty-eight, the case was put in the hands of a single detective, Tom Jensen. After twenty years, when the killer was finally captured with the help of DNA technology, Jensen and fellow detectives spent 188 days interviewing Gary Ridgway in an effort to learn his most closely held secrets--an epic confrontation with evil that proved as disturbing and surreal as can be imagined."

Genre: Comics and Graphic novels; True Crime

Subjects: Detectives, Serial murder investigation, Serial murderers, Serial murders

hoopla e-book 2019

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

by Octavia E. Butler, Damian Duffy, and John Jennings

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that suddenly transformed in to the frightening world of the antebellum South. Dana, a young black writer, can't explain how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does quickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder--and her progenitor. Her survival, her very existence, depends on it."

Genre: Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy; Comics and Graphic novels; Science fiction comics

Subjects: Ancestors, Rescues, Slavery, Time travel (Past)

available as a Sails Book

Locke & Key, Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft

by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez

"Hill crafts a gripping account of the shattered Locke family's attempt to rebuild after the father/husband is murdered by a deranged high school student and the family subsequently moving in with the deceased father's brother at the family homestead in Maine. But as anyone who has read horror fiction in the past 70-odd years will tell you, it's a bad idea to try to leave behind the gruesome goings-on in your life by moving to an island named “Lovecraft.” What begins as a study in coping with grief soon veers into creepy territory as the youngest Locke discovers a doorway with decidedly spectral qualities, along with a well that houses someone or something that desperately wants out and will use any means available to gain freedom, including summoning the teenage murderer who set events in motion in the first place."

Genre: Comics and Graphic novels; Horror comics

Subjects: Fathers, Grief, Islands, Mansions, Murder

sails e-book

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1

by Emil Ferris

"Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes, filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster magazines iconography. Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge."

Genre: Comics and Graphic novels; Coming-of-age stories; Historical comics; Mystery comics

Subjects: Apartment dwellers, Art museums, Artists, Brothers and sisters, Girl detectives, Holocaust survivors, Imagination in girls, Monster films, Murder investigation, Pulp periodicals, Single-parent families

My Friend Dahmer

by Derf Backderf

"You only think you know this story. In 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer — the most notorious serial killer since Jack the Ripper — seared himself into the American consciousness. To the public, Dahmer was a monster who committed unthinkable atrocities. To Derf Backderf, “Jeff” was a much more complex figure: a high school friend with whom he had shared classrooms, hallways, and car rides.In My Friend Dahmer, a haunting and original graphic novel, writer-artist Backderf creates a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling against the morbid urges emanating from the deep recesses of his psyche — a shy kid, a teenage alcoholic, and a goofball who never quite fit in with his classmates. With profound insight, what emerges is a Jeffrey Dahmer that few ever really knew, and one readers will never forget."

Genre: Biographical comics; Comics and Graphic novels; Life stories; True Crime

Subjects: Alcoholic teenagers, Growing up, High school students, High schools, Murderers, Psychoses, Psychoses in teenagers, Suburban life, Teenage boys

Through the Woods

by Emily Carroll

"A wealthy young woman weds a man in a lonely old house, and at night she hears a forlorn song of unavenged murder lilting from the walls. A girl spends the summer with her brother and his fiancée, who is not what she seems. Three sisters wait for their father to return, but one by one they disappear with a tall man in a broad-brimmed hat. All the tales in Carroll’s debut graphic novel are fairly standard ghost stories, but it is her eerie illustrations—popping with bold color on black, glossy pages—that masterfully build terrifying tension and a keep-the-lights-on atmosphere. With cantilevered perspectives and dark inky splotches speckling the corners, the spooky images of stark forests, gaping caves, bloodshot eyes, and ominous shadows are brilliantly married to the text printed in manic handwritten fonts, some crazed and swirling, others coldly deadpan. The best ghost stories make great use of dramatic tension, and Carroll is no slouch here, either: she amplifies the scariness of the stories—full of ghosts, murder, and monsters—with startling page turns revealing grotesque, squeal-inducing images."

Genre: Comics and Graphic novels; Fairy tale and folklore-inspired fiction; Horror comics; Short stories

Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror, Vol. 1

by Junji Ito, 伊藤潤二

"Kurôzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in everything from seashells and whirlpools in water to the spiral marks on people's bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi's father and the voice from the cochlea in our inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurôzu-cho are pulled ever deeper into a whirlpool from which there is no return!"

Genre: Comics and Graphic novels; Horror comics; Manga

Subjects: Curses, Death, Infection, Small town life, Survival, Teenage girls, Teenagers