Extremities: Tales of Death, Murder, and Revenge

Gr 9 Up—Many of these stories were previous published in other collections, and are brought together here for the first time. The teen characters face ghosts, monsters, haunted houses, and murder. Some selections have a realistic premise. In "Apparent Motives," a boy creates a plan to kill his father and make it look as though the man ran away, but the trail leads the police straight to his mother. Other stories have more occult appeal. In "Blood Magic," two boys find themselves in the middle of a robbery and are taken hostage. Eddie's plan to escape is to use monsters he creates with his own blood to kill their captors. All he has to do is start bleeding enough to create them. The content gets pretty graphic so this book is best suited for an older audience. Most of these tales are short enough to memorize and tell around a campfire. A solid choice for collections in need of more horror stories.—Erik Carlson, White Plains Public Library, NY