Twilight Darkness #25 Deadly Rhyme and #26 Scavenger's Hunt

In the final two books of the Twilight Where Darkness Begins set, the series changes from horror to mystery with no supernatural events.  When a series strays from its premise, it is clearly on the decline and needs to end.  The series should have ended after #24.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #25, A Deadly Rhyme, Angela is a new student at an exclusive prep school, Glencora.  Strange accidents befall several students and teachers, and Angela is nervous.

There is mention of a spirit at the beginning of the story.  However, I never expected the spirit to appear, and it never did.  This is not a ghost story.  It is a mild mystery where a living and breathing person decides to cause trouble out of vengeance.  This story is not horror or anything similar to it, and the story is only slightly interesting.

The book has too many characters.  I kept having to flip back towards the beginning of the story to try to recall each one.  I kept getting confused.  The author also randomly switches between referring to teachers by their first and last names.  In one instance, a teacher is called by her first name for quite a few chapters, then the text abruptly switches to her last name with no explanation.  I had no idea who was meant and was very confused.

Information is revealed in a fashion that is confusing, and it happens several times.

This book was not written well.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #26, Scavenger's Hunt, Kyle Scavenger visits her family's ancestral home with her aunt.  Aunt Ruth is hosting a scavenger hunt on the property.  And it's not worth the effort to explain further.

Like the previous book, this book has no supernatural events.  This is a murder mystery and nothing else.  I did not enjoy it very much.

Nancy Drew is mentioned three times during the story.  On page 7, we learn that Kyle read the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books as a child. Later, Kyle is called "Nancy Drew" twice by her boyfriend.

I overall greatly enjoyed reading the Twilight Where Darkness Begins series.

Twilight Darkness #22 Haunted Dollhouse, #23 The Warning, and #24 Amulet of Doom

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #22, The Haunted Dollhouse, Jessica and her mother have moved into an old house.  An old dollhouse is discovered in the attic and is brought downstairs.  Soon, Jessica notices that the dolls in the dollhouse change position on their own and that the furniture also moves.  After something happens in the dollhouse, it then happens in the original house.  Jessica wants to get rid of the dollhouse, but her mother refuses.

The prologue is quite effective in setting up a spooky atmosphere for the story.

One scene almost caused me to have a panic attack.  It was similar to something very bad that happened in my life last year, and I began to get upset anticipating and fearing the same result. Fortunately, the scene in the book has a happier conclusion, so I was able to calm down and enjoy the rest of the book.

This is an excellent book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #23, The Warning, Lois loves her boyfriend, Ronnie, and life is good.  Her best friend keeps warning her about her boyfriend, which is annoying.  Lois has no worries until her fingers begin typing hateful messages during typing class. Somebody hates her and wants bad things to happen to her.

Ronnie is an obvious abusive boyfriend.  He is manipulative and calls Lois "honeybunch." Yuck.  He gets angry when Lois does not do what he wants, but Lois is oblivious to his faults. I hate reading books where the protagonist is so clueless.  However, the story does accurately depict how someone like Lois would act while in an abusive relationship.

The boyfriend situation is tied to the warnings that Lois types during her typing class.  The mystery behind who is possessing Lois's hands is quite surprising.  The culprit cannot possibly be guessed until the reveal.

This is a very good book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #24, The Amulet of Doom, Marilyn's aunt, Zenobia, dies of a heart attack.  After Zenobia's death, her spirit comes to Marilyn, telling her to retrieve Zenobia's amulet from her body and to guard it.  Once the amulet is in Marilyn's possession, she realizes that the amulet contains a dangerous spirit.

While this is a good story, I did not care for it. This set features two books written by Bruce Coville, this book and Spirits and Spells, and both books are centered around magic and fantasy with characters who appear from another world or via time travel.  They don't fit the premise of the rest of the set, and I did not like them very much. They don't mesh well with the other stories, and that's my issue.

Twilight Darkness #19 Dance of Death, #20 Family Crypt, and #21 Evil on the Bayou

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #19, Dance of Death, Regan comes to live with her aunt and uncle at Ferncrest Manor.  Regan senses an evil presence in the house, and she is mystified about how nobody else notices.  Regan begins having vivid dreams about the previous owners of the house.  Two twin brothers once lived there, and the brothers were rivals for the affection of a young woman.  Now long dead, both brothers haunt the house.

On page 72, Regan refects, "Reading was as necessary as eating or sleeping for her."  I would have to agree with that.  On page 73, we learn that Regan would "even read cereal boxes and matchbook covers when nothing else was available."  I have done that as well.



This is an excellent story.  There is a mystery between the twin brothers.  As I read, I began to get an idea of what the secret might be.  The mystery is very intriguing.  Even though the book has ghosts, the ghosts did not scare me.  This is a mystery from the past that one brother wants Regan to solve, while the other brother works to thwart Regan's efforts.

This is an outstanding book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #20, Family Crypt, Janet skips school to go on a cruise on the lake.  The ship gets stalled near an island, and Janet spends the night on the island.  Janet discovers an old cemetery and rides on a horse that nobody can find the next day.  Unfortunately for Janet, her presence on the island allowed for an evil spirit to escape, putting Janet and her friends in serious danger.

The beginning of the book is not interesting at all.  The historical information given is rather confusing and lengthy.  Otherwise, the book is excellent and very suspenseful.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #21, Evil on the Bayou, Meg goes to stay with Aunt Belle, who is bedridden and quite elderly.  Meg notices that the photographs on the stairway seem alive as she walks up the stairs.  Meg sits with Aunt Belle, and each visit leaves her drained. Meanwhile, Aunt Belle starts looking younger and healthier.  In horror, Meg realizes what is happening.

The plot of this book reminds me of the movie Alison's Birthday, which I saw on television several times at around the time this book was published.  Alison's Birthday was released in 1981, and this book was published in 1984.  In the movie, Alison's grandmother plans to switch bodies with her granddaughter.  That is not quite the same premise as this book, but it is close enough.  The movie is very creepy and so is this book.

This book is excellent.

Twilight Darkness #16 Drawing the Dead, #17 Storm Child, and #18 Watery Grave

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #16, Drawing the Dead, Cynthia returns to Chapel Valley, her childhood home.  Upon Cynthia's arrival, she begins drawing deeply disturbing pictures.  It's as though something is controlling her pencil. Cynthia soon notices that her drawings foretell the future.  Her emotions have become volatile, changing from love to hate suddenly.  Cynthia becomes fearful, knowing that an evil spirit is controlling her.

The climax of the story where Cynthia does what she can to get rid of the evil spirit does not make sense.  Of course this type of story never makes sense, but I don't understand why what Cynthia does should solve the problem.

Additionally, I did not like this story very much.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #17, Storm Child, Cindy has taken a job as a nanny for a rich family.  Her charge is Ian, a troubled young boy who behaves violently.  His behavior worsens each time a storm hits the area.  Accidents begin occurring, and Cindy must confront the fact that Ian is causing them.  Cindy must find a way to calm Ian before someone gets killed.

I enjoyed this book, although it took several chapters to get into it.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #18, Watery Grave, Julie sees the name Lavinia in her Spanish book, then it disappears.  A sea captain keeps appearing in the mist, calling out Lavinia, as though Julie is Lavinia.  Julie learns of the sunken ship Lavinia and of the ship's missing captain, who is now a spirit that haunts the area.

The spirit is mentioned in a legend about a sea creature that forces a woman to join him forever as his love.  Almost too late Julie learns that she is the object of the kelpie's desire.

This book is not written well.  The story idea is good, but it is poorly executed.  The story drags at times.  Too many words are used to describe certain situations.  Some startling scenes are described in a roundabout way that takes away from the emotional impact.  I don't want to read every detail about every piece of furniture in the room when I want to know why somebody screamed!  I don't care about the furniture!

The first part of the book is rough, but the later part of the story is excellent in spite of the flaws.

Twilight Darkness #13 Vicious Circle, #14 Footprints of the Dead, and #15 Spirits and Spells

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #13, Vicious Circle, children are disappearing one at a time. First, an important possession disappears. Hours later, the child disappears.  When the children return, they are silent and unresponsive.  Jenny fears that her little sister, Andrea, will be the next child taken.  How can Jenny protect Andrea from the evil that lives near the river?

This book includes some excessively lengthy flashbacks of the former life of the evil spirit.  I found the flashbacks to be way too long and rather confusing.  I would have preferred for those parts not to have been in the story.

Aside from the flashbacks, this is a very good book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #14, Footprints of the Dead, Dani retuns to the island of St. Jacques to live on her family's sugarcane plantation.  Dani is shocked at how much the island has changed.  The people are now so poor, and her beloved Uncle Victor is hated by the villagers.  Dani cannot understand what is wrong.  Later, Dani learns about the evil voodoo practiced in the mountains and how voodoo is used to bring people back from the dead.

One character is likable until partway through the book when the reader learns this character's secret.  Dani has no idea, and the reader's stomach will churn upon learning the information. This makes the book quite suspenseful, since for a good part of the story Dani has no idea what is really going on.

This is a compelling story about zombies.  It would have made a good introductory book for a zombie apocalypse trilogy.  The plot is resolved in this book, but it is left open-ended.  More zombies will come to life later, and I wish that this book had been part of a trilogy.

This is an excellent book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #15, Spirits and Spells, Gerry and his friends play a new role playing game in an abandoned old mansion.  The premise is that the players are trapped in the mansion and must find certain hidden objects before morning, or else they will be killed.  Soon after the friends begin playing, they learn that the game is real and that they are truly prisoners in the mansion.  They must defeat the evil presence or lose reality as they know it forever.

I did not like this book.  The story gets very positive reviews, so I suppose it is just me.  I did not care for the magical aspect.  This story is not at all like the other books in the set, which all feature characters set on Earth who are haunted by spirits.  This book features visitors from another world and has lots of magic.  I was not in the mood for that kind of story.

Twilight Darkness #10 Avenging Spirit, #11 Nightmare Lake, and #12 Twisted Room

In Twilight Darkness #10, The Avenging Spirit, strange accidents happen at Thunder Rock. Christina finds herself drawn to Thunder Rock, where she is nearly killed.  Christina soon realizes that a restless spirit will never be at rest until he takes revenge on the descendant of the person who wronged him.

I overall enjoyed this book, but I consider it below average as compared to the rest of the set.

In Twilight Darkness #11, Nightmare Lake, Burt and Sammi vacation at a lake when Sammi discovers a skeleton in the woods.  Their dog jostles a stick of wood loose from the skeleton, and later, the young people learn that the skeleton was a vampire.  The removal of the wood has brought the vampire back to life.  Burt and Sammi are thrust into a nightmare as they try to avoid being bitten by vampires.

This is overall a very good book up until the end. Unfortunately, the ending ruins the story.  Since I know how the story ends, I will never be able to read and enjoy this book again.  I closed the book feeling quite disgusted.  I won't state what happens, but if you don't mind being spoiled which will result in you not being able to enjoy this book, read "Cliches to Avoid: 4 Story Endings Your Readers Will Hate."  It is the second ending listed on the page.  Ugh.  I can't stand it when authors do that.

In Twilight Darkness #12, The Twisted Room, Lisa goes to live with Great-Aunt Nikki, who is a recluse who is stuck in the past.  Lisa sees a girl beckoning to her from the window next door and goes to visit her.  Marie invites Lisa to a party... a party that was held on June 10, 1944.  Lisa is pulled between past and present by Marie, and almost too late Lisa realizes that Marie is using her to change history.

I learned something new when I read this book. On page 127, Aunt Jenny (Great-Aunt Nikki) tells Lisa that many years ago margarine was white and used to come in a clear bag with a capsule of yellow dye.  They would break the capsule and knead the bag until the margarine turned yellow. Even my parents had never heard of the yellow dye, since they were young children when restrictions on margarine were lifted.  I found this very interesting.  Read this page for more information.

This book is quite disjointed during the opening chapters.  The back cover summary is also confusing, since the summary makes it sound like Marie is the protagonist when she is instead the evil spirit. By halfway through the book when the plot begins to make sense, the story becomes quite interesting and compelling.

The first half of the book is confusing and a bit depressing, and the second half of the book is excellent.

Twilight Darkness #7 Play to Live, #8 Blood Red Roses, and #9 Demon Tree

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #7, Play to Live, Joey is new to Norwich.  Nothing is more important to Norwich than football, and the Norwich team is on a huge winning streak.  Joey makes the team, and he notices that horrific injuries to the opposing team occur during each game.  Joey also notices that Mr. Wynn, owner of the sporting goods store, has a strange hold over the team.  Joey begins to suspect something evil at play.

This is another suspenseful book, and it is a very good story.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #8, Blood Red Roses, Kate places a deposit on an antique mirror for her bedroom.  Tracy, a selfish snobbish girl, tries to force the shopkeeper to sell the mirror to her instead.  When the shopkeeper refuses, Tracy is livid.  Kate hangs the mirror in her bedroom and immediately has bloody nightmares.  Tracy steals the mirror, and Kate's nightmares end.  Tracy begins acting strange, and Kate realizes that the mirror is evil. Can Kate save Tracy before something horrible happens?

The scene in which Tracy tries to get the mirror sold to her reminds me of Lettie Briggs and the study lamp in the Dana Girls book, By the Light of the Study Lamp.  Imagine the turn that book could have taken if the study lamp had been possessed by an evil spirit.  I would love to see Lettie possessed!  As it is, she already seems possessed at times.

Page 11 captures perfectly how someone feels when dreading an event that is coming the next day.  "It was Sunday morning already.  Monday, and the impossibility of avoiding the other girl at Shelter Cove High School, was already creeping up like a poisonous fog."

The ending of this book is horrifying.  This is an excellent book.


In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #9, Demon Tree, Maggie comes to live with her grandparents in an isolated small town.  Maggie sees a black shadow at night that beckons to her.  Everyone is miserable and mean and will not explain why.  It's as though something is holding the entire town captive.

The book is good but not that scary.  However, the title of the book is unsettling, and that set the stage for me getting spooked, when I should have realized what was really happening.

I was reading the book on the evening of September 2, when three different times I heard strange noises from different parts of the room. One time was a fairly loud sound like something hitting the window, and another time a sound apparently came from inside the dresser on the other side of the room.  I remember turning around in my chair and staring perplexed at my dresser.  I can't remember where the third sound was.  I did not imagine the sounds, but I also could not think of a logical explanation.  I was rather unnerved, even though I did not seriously think anything supernatural was involved.

A few hours later, I was trying to get to sleep when the mattress made a popping sound from the corner.  That unnerved me even more.  I woke up right before 7 AM the next morning.  I wasn't fully awake, but I was aware of my surroundings.  Suddenly, the mattress began moving up and down, jostling me.  It felt like something large was under my bed trying to push the mattress up, like I had been thrust into a horror movie. It was unreal.  I immediately put my foot against the wall, which was shaking hard.  I knew it was an earthquake, but it really scared me.  After the shaking stopped, I got up and went online immediately where I learned that we had just had a magnitude 5.8 earthquake, the largest in state history.  I was nervous for around half the day.

A few days later, I checked recent earthquakes and discovered that all three sounds from the night before had been caused by small earthquakes.  Click on the image to see a larger version.

My time zone is five hours behind the times stated, so the three earthquakes listed below the magnitude 5.8 earthquake are the three from the evening of September 2 and must have caused the three strange noises.  At least I had a logical explanation for all of the sounds, with the exception of the mattress popping.  I can rest easy knowing that my house is not possessed.  I'll always remember I was reading Demon Tree when all of these earthquakes occurred.

Twilight Darkness #4 Fatal Attraction, #5 Blink of the Mind, and #6 Voices in the Dark

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #4, Fatal Attraction, Janet begins to suffer from terrible headaches that last for days.  A newcomer to the area, Mirella, appears to have mesmerized Janet's boyfriend, David.  Janet is certain that Mirella is evil, but nobody believes her.

I guess any teenage girl would consider it evil for another girl to steal her boyfriend.  In all seriousness, Mirella is evil, and Janet is in grave danger.  An evil spirit stalks Janet, and Janet's friend must help her avoid certain death.

This is a very scary book.  I felt quite spooked during some scenes.  This is an excellent story.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #5, Blink of the Mind, Kelly's parents were recently killed when their airplane crashed.  Kelly's mind keeps blinking back to the night of the crash, and she actually witnesses what happened in the plane right before and right after the crash.

Kelly's mind blinks happen more and more frequently, and with horror, she realizes that she is also glimpsing future events.  Kelly senses that an evil entity is watching her at all times and that this entity is out to destroy her.

This is an overall good book, although I consider it below average as compared to most of the books in the series.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #6, Voices in the Dark, Christie has moved to a small town. She has trouble making friends, and one of the girls at school spreads gossip about her.  This girl instinctively hates Christie, and Christie has no idea why.

Christie takes comfort in riding, but soon, she feels an evil presence inside the barn.  Christie learns that the presence is the spirit of an ancestor and that the spirit wants Christie to join him in eternity.

This book is quite suspenseful.  This is an excellent book.

Twilight Darkness #1 Deadly Sleep, #2 The Power, and #3 The Initiation

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #1, Deadly Sleep, Jaynie has arrived in Scotland to visit her friend Evelyn.  A photograph on the wall of Jaynie's bedroom glows at night, and Jaynie soon realizes that a spirit is involved.

Jaynie spends a lot of time depressed over breaking up with her boyfriend.  This happened before the beginning of the story.  The boyfriend is never part of the plot, so I did not care.  I was bored reading about the boyfriend.

When the photograph on the wall glows and Jaynie's name is called from the picture, the scene does not feel scary.  Jaynie acts like the glowing photo is no big deal.  If she had been scared, I might have been scared.



I never connected with the characters, and I never cared about the story.  I felt that the text was missing that something that makes for a compelling story.  A character dies in this book, and I also did not care.  This book could have been written better and is a poor introductory book for the series.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #2, The Power, Meredith finds a small box hanging from her locker.  Inside the box are a lock of hair and a note.  The note proclaims that Meredith is in the sender's power.  Meredith is inclined to believe that she is the victim of a joke when she discovers that she is missing a lock of hair.  In horror, Meredith realizes that someone cut a lock of hair from her head while she was sleeping. Who is stalking her?

This book is scary because of the sinister threat. This is an excellent book.

In Twilight Where Darkness Begins #3, The Initiation, Adam is a new student at Blair Prep. Soon after Adam's arrival, he finds a body in a gym locker.  The incident is reported, but strangely, the police never interview Adam about the body.  Adam soon notices that many of the Blair Prep students are secretive and that some kind of initiation is held at night.  He befriends Loren, a student from a nearby girls' school, and the two begin to investigate the strange events.

This is an excellent story.

I have created a Facebook group for enthusiasts of vintage teen books from the 1980s to the present.  Please follow this link to join.

Twilight and Dark Forces Teen Horror Series

I learned about two sets of vintage teen horror series from the 1980s that I had never read: Twilight Where Darkness Begins and Dark Forces.  I seem to recall in junior high seeing other students reading the Dark Forces books, but I never read one.  I have no memory of ever seeing the Twilight books.

I looked up the series and was intrigued to discover that both sets of books are from the early 1980s.  I have a particular affinity for books published during the 1980s.  The reading that caused me to collect series books occurred from the summer of 1979 up through 1991.  I began collecting series books in 1991.  Consider that 10 of those 13 years were the 1980s.  That decade and my love for reading are closely intertwined.

I am familiar with the teen horror genre.  I loved reading Christopher Pike's teen horror books from 1988 into the early 1990s, so I suspected that I might like the Twilight books.  I went to Thriftbooks.com and purchased seven of the Twilight books in late May.  I chose the books that I could get at the minimum price of around $4.00 each so that if I didn't like the books, I could get my money back.

I read two of the Twilight books in late August in order to decide whether to complete the set.  I did not like the first book I read, but the second one was excellent.  Since the author of the first book did not write any of the other titles, I concluded that I would most likely enjoy reading the set.

I spent one Saturday evening building the set of Twilight books.  I find it a fun challenge to try to build a complete set of vintage books all at once by purchasing the books individually from different sellers.  Since I want to read the books and want to get the set assembled quickly, I must find every title immediately.  I greatly enjoy the process of finding and purchasing the books.

Since the Twilight series unfortunately has the same name as the very popular modern teen series about Edward and Bella, a search for "Twilight" cannot be used to find these vintage books.  One must search individually by title and author.  I also used "Twilight Dell" and "Twilight Darkness" in some of the searches to see what would show up.

I was able to find all of the Twilight books in individual listings on eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and AbeBooks.  I was able to get some books very inexpensively while I had to pay higher prices for other titles.  For all titles, I went with the very cheapest copy I could find online.

The Twilight set consists of the following books.

 1. Deadly Sleep, Dale Cowan, 1982
 2. The Power, Betsy Haynes, 1982
 3. The Initiation, Robert Brunn, 1982
 4. Fatal Attraction, Imogen Howe, 1982
 5. Blink of the Mind, Dorothy Brenner Francis, 1982
 6. Voices in the Dark, James Haynes, 1982
 7. Play to Live, Charles Veley, 1982
 8. Blood Red Roses, Sarah Armstrong, 1982
 9. Demon Tree, Colin Daniel, 1983
10. The Avenging Spirit, E. Stevenson, 1983
11. Nightmare Lake, Carl Laymon, 1983
12. The Twisted Room, Janet Patton Smith, 1983
13. Vicious Circle, Imogen Howe, 1983
14. Footprints of the Dead, Jay Callahan, 1983
15. Spirits and Spells, Bruce Coville, 1983
16. Drawing the Dead, Neil R. Selden, 1983
17. Storm Child, Susan Netter, 1983
18. Watery Grave, Joseph Trainor, 1983
19. Dance of Death, Lou Kassem, 1984
20. Family Crypt, Joseph Trainor, 1984
21. Evil on the Bayou, Richie Tankersley Cusick, 1984
22. The Haunted Dollhouse, Susan Blake, 1984
23. The Warning, Amanda Byron, 1985. ISBN
24. Amulet of Doom, Bruce Coville, 1985
25. A Deadly Rhyme, Gloria Gonzalez, 1986
26. Scavenger's Hunt, Arthur Bicknell, 1987

Here are my books.

After I purchased all of the Twilight books that evening, I thought about the Dark Forces series.  The cover art is creepier, and I was less interested in trying them.  I decided to go ahead and build a set anyway.  Late that Saturday night, I found all of the Dark Forces books on the same sites that I used to purchase the Twilight books.

The Dark Forces set consists of the following books.

 1.  The Game, Les Logan, 1983
 2.  Magic Show, Laurie Bridges and Paul Alexander, 1983
 3.  The Doll, Rex Sparger, 1983
 4.  Devil Wind, Laurie Bridges and Paul Alexander, 1983
 5.  The Bargain, Rex Sparger, 1983
 6.  Swamp Witch, Laurie Bridges and Paul Alexander, 1983
 7.  Unnatural Talent, Les Logan, 1983
 8.  The Companion, Scott Siegel, 1983
 9.  Eyes of the Tarot, Bruce Coville, 1983
10.  Beat the Devil, Scott Siegel, 1984
11.  Waiting Spirits, Bruce Coville, 1984
12.  The Ashton Horror, Laurie Bridges, 1984
13.  The Curse, Larry Weinberg, 1984
14.  Blood Sport, R. C. Scott, 1984
15.  The Charming, Jane Polcovar, 1984

Here are my books.

Reviews of individual titles in both series will follow.