Cliff McNish's top 10 most frightening books for teenagers

Cliff McNish's first book was The Doomspell, inspired by a story he told his young daughter. Since then he has published The Silver Sequence and supernatural thrillers Breathe and Angel. His toon meer latest book, The Hunting Ground, is a chilling ghost tale.

"It's a curious thing that most people's reading tastes become progressively less dark as they age. While I see many of my middle-aged friends settling down to read nothing more scary than Pride and Prejudice if you please, a sizable proportion of their 9-12 year-old children are actively ignoring them to seek out fiction that is edgy, scary and, frankly, mayhem-led.

Teenagers are the real trench-terrorists, though. They gather like happy ghouls at the shelves of dark fantasy, horror and real-life crime or its facsimiles. Some won't read anything else. It's only much later they'll realise they did so because at least for a few years they were embarked on the biggest and most exciting search for personal identity the majority will ever undertake in their lives. During that time exploring the darker, more frightening seam of the psyche is not just a secret pleasure but a necessity.

[...] here's my choice of ten stories that in different ways will frighten and enthral even the most unshakeably cocky teenager."

Cliff McNish – LT author page toon minder