A 2023 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Novel! In a Florida tourist trap, a summer acting job turns into a real-life horror show when a cast member turns up dead—then disappears. This nail-biting story is perfect for fans of Fear Street and the Scream franchise. Dave is spending his final summer before college working at Frightmares House of Horrors, a struggling haunted house attraction held together by malfunctioning killer clown mannequins, a cheap replica Annabelle doll, and a lot of improvising. After a particularly disastrous shift ends in an employee walkout, Dave reluctantly takes over a role for his friend, however, he makes a horrifying discovery—a real dead body, hidden on set. But when Dave returns with help, the body is gone. Though the killer covered their tracks, Dave realizes they must know what he saw. Could he be their next target? Praise for FRIGHTMARES: A 2023 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Novel! "Frightmares is YA horror at its best— voicy, thrilling, and wholly unique. Gibson’s quirky characters and whip-smart humor shine against the non-Disney-fied backdrop of Florida’s seedy underbelly. A spine-chilling book you won’t forget ."—Jennifer Moffett, author Those Who Prey "[A] propulsive thriller." —Kirkus " Witty and fast-moving ." —Booklist "Summer thrills and chills !" —Brightly Eva V. Gibson is the author of the YA novels Together We Caught Fire, Where Secrets Lie, and Frightmares . A bookworm since early childhood, she has routinely gravitated to the dark and gritty, reading, then writing, stories with grim themes and flawed, complicated characters. She lives in Northern Virginia with her family, and spends most of her time brooding, baking, creating, and parenting, awaiting the day her kids read her books with equal parts excitement and trepidation. Chapter 1 This whole night sucks. The second-to-last working bulb flickered in the cobwebbed chandelier, gave a final flare, and went dark, throwing the room into shadow. I stepped back and peered up at it, sucking air through my teeth as I knocked my hip against the antique dresser. Josie Manning’s eyes blinked open. She squinted into the gloom, peering through the lock of hair caught in her smeared eye makeup. The wrought-iron bed frame creaked as I leaned over her. She shifted, her breath catching in her bloodstained corset. “Hold still,” I hissed, tightening the worn leather restraint around her goth-pale wrist. I’d be lucky if it lasted through Sunday. “This piece-of-shit buckle--” She opened her mouth to answer, then paused, listening. I heard it too--shrieks and clattering. Hurried footsteps, closer than they should be. Her finger tapped my knuckle: one, two, three. Ready or not. She started screaming right before the curtain swung open. It was reflex by now. The ax was in my grip, swinging an arc above her tear-streaked face. I brought it down hard on the clean sheet covering her legs, buried it in the mattress just below her knee. Blood welled and blossomed around the blade; the toes on her severed foot twitched, drawing gasps and laughter. “SEE? SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO? TRY TO RUN AWAY NOW. GO AHEAD, SEE HOW FAR YOU GET WITHOUT YOUR LEG.” “Dude, that’s messed up.” The voice--belonging to some douche in a Tapout tank shirt--sent a wave of giggles through the crowd. A bunch of high school kids, most around my age, most of them grinning and taking pictures. We’d be all over the #FRIGHTMARES hashtag by midnight, swimming in well-deserved ridicule and emoji-driven mockery. Thank God I look nothing like myself. Josie screamed louder, pleading for help. I left the ax buried in the mattress and reached for the coiled bullwhip hanging on the wall above the bed. Even Tapout flinched at the first downswing. I cracked it again and again against her thighs, striping the sheets bloody. Striping the air with her broken wails. The whip did most of the work. One more tweaked shoulder would derail my swim training, and I’d have nothing to offer in the fall season but weak form and a shitty backstroke, so a half-assed performance it was. No way was I going to let a terrible summer job mess up my swimming scholarship. It wasn’t an option. The group eventually shuffled into the corridor, heading for the next scene. About a nanosecond after the door closed behind them, I was moving: smearing fresh F/X blood on the whip; coiling it and hanging it back on the wall; yanking the ax out of the mattress; ripping the stained sheet off Josie’s “legs” and stuffing it in the basket under the bed next to her actual legs. Her torso sprouted from the cutout in the mattress, ramrod straight and prickly as a pissed-off cactus. I snapped a fresh sheet over her, tucking it around her waist to hide the hole, and repositioned the severed leg so it was even with the other prosthetic. The mechanical toes wriggled beneath the sheet like trapped mice. “You okay?” “Well, Dave,” she answered, “I’m starving a