Hello, my name is Ashley Poston.
And I, am the author in residence here at Epic Reads.
And today I am bringing you the video of
Haunting YAs for the Spooky Season.
[MUSIC]
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black.
Yeah, the Holly Black.
Tana lives in a monster infested walled city called Coldtown.
When she wakes up surrounded by a bunch of corpses,
she's gotta figure out what the hell happened and get to the bottom of it.
But to do that, she might have to go into the opulent heart
of Coldtown itself and face its demons.
And next step on the docket is the Nevermore trilogy by Kelly Creagh.
Now, don't let these covers scare you away, this is an oldie but a goodie.
When cheerleader Isabel is partnered with the town's god,
she finds herself in a world that haunted Edgar Allan Poe into his final days,
and it might be haunting her too, now.
Next up is a Nightingale by Amy Lukavics.
It's 1951, and June Harding wants to go to college and
write her dark science fiction novels.
But her parents have other plans and they want to make her into a good woman.
And so they send her off to an institution where she finds herself
in a horror novel of its own making.
And next up is Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Cordova.
When Alex accidentally vanishes her family when she tries to do a spell to rid
herself of her own magic, she must rely on the mysterious Nova to travel
into the mythical land of Los Lagos to retrieve them and to fix her mistake.
It's a lot of fun.
And did I mention there's bi rep?
There's bi rep.
And next up is Witchy by Ariel Slamet Ries.
In a mythical witchy kingdom where the length of your hair dictates
how strong your magic is,
a young witch sees her father burned at the stake for the length of his hair.
And she is conscripted into the witch guard
who are the ones who burned her father.
Now, she must decide if she will go with them willingly or if she will stand up for
her own ideals.
And next up is Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson.
With only a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire Mila brings her dead
best friend back to life to help solve her murder before the killer strikes again.
And next up is These Witches Don't Burn by Isabel Sterling.
When a blood witch threatens the town of Salem,
actual witch Hannah must team up with her ex-girlfriend to save her coven and
stop these terrifying blood rituals before it's too late.
And next up is the Stalking Jack the Ripper series by Kerri Maniscalco.
It's girls in STEM.
It is really, really, really hot boys.
It is murder.
It is forensics.
It is traveling across the Atlantic to solve murders.
Which what is there not to love about this?
The last book just came out, so you probably wanna get on it.
It's really good.
Next is Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace.
A year after Breezy's murder, she wakes up,
and she finds out that she's super, totally dead.
Being dead is such a bummer, because she's alive and
she remembers everything except how she died.
And so now, she has to figure out how she died and find her murderer and
get revenge on herself basically, like jeez beans,
that is just so rough.
And the last two are oldies but goodies.
Don't let their pub date fool you, they are timeless artifacts in YA history.
Maybe a little dated, they might have flip cell phones,
but you'll get over that very quickly.
The first is The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause.
Zoe meets Simon.
Simon happens to be a very beautiful undead vampire and
he wants to get rid of his curse of immortality.
And Zoe might just be the fleshy warm girl to do it.
Fleshy, why did I say that word?
[SOUND] Anyway, she might be the mortal to do it, right, but at what cost?
And second but not last, actually it is last anyway,
it is Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde.
When Kerry accidentally saves a guy from being beat up by a bunch of brutes she
finds out that guy is in fact a vampire and
those brutes were super totally vampire hunters.
And now she's stuck in a vicious desperate game between vampire and
vampire hunter and she might be the one who ends up dead by morning.
Okay, I'm gonna do one more because of course I am.
I have to do this because this was one of my first spooky,
not really spooky, more sparkly YAs.
I'm going to give a shout-out to Twilight by Stephenie Meyer simply because everyone
knows it.
Everyone always like [SOUND] it's Twilight.
It was, I loved it as a teenager.
And it was actually my first real foray into vampires.
And since then I have completely broadened my horizons for vampires.
But I just need to give a shout out because I think that a lot of people
started reading, at least my demographic, started reading YA because of Twilight.
So despite your feelings on it and how you think about it has changed the industry.
And we would not be here without it.
So thank you Twilight and your sparkly vampires.
And that is it for this episode.
Thank you so much, Epic Reads.
My name is Ashley Poston and I will see you guys in the next video.
Bye.