Don't Look Behind You, Summer of Fear, and Down a Dark Hall

In Don't Look Behind You, April's family becomes part of the witness protection program after April's father testifies in a trial that results in the conviction of drug smugglers.  April does not understand the seriousness of the situation and makes several mistakes that place her family in deadly danger.

I could relate to April, although I wouldn't have made her mistakes.  I was always a young person who did what I was told and understood why I should follow orders.  I would not have endangered my family like April did. However, I understand her naiveté, as many teens would make those kinds of mistakes.

I greatly enjoyed this book.  It is very suspenseful.

In Summer of Fear, Rachel's cousin, Julia, comes to live with Rachel and her family after her parents are killed in an accident.  Pretty soon, Rachel discovers that Julia is trying to steal her boyfriend and is turning her family against her.  Rachel finds evidence that Julia might be a witch, but nobody will believe her.

I also greatly enjoyed this book.

In Down a Dark Hall, Kit is sent away to boarding school at Blackwood School for Girls while her mother and stepfather go on their honeymoon.  Kit is resentful and doesn't want to attend the school.  Upon Kit's arrival, she senses that the school is evil.  Soon, Kit and the other girls notice strange events and try to figure out what is happening.


This book is quite spooky and mysterious.  I love the atmosphere.  I also love how the girls work to solve the mystery.  They can't figure out what is going on, so they puzzle out the situation.

I couldn't help thinking of the Nancy Drew games as I read this story.  The setting would be perfect for a Nancy Drew game.

On the subject of Nancy Drew, the back cover refers to the school as "Blackwood Hall."  I'm pretty sure that exact name is never used anywhere in the book.  The school is just called "Blackwood."  I feel like someone was having a little fun with the promotional blurb.

This is an excellent book.

Dark Forces #3 The Doll and #4 Devil Wind

In Dark Forces #3, The Doll, Cassie is drawn to a doll that is available as a carnival prize at the fair. Her boyfriend, Jack, wins the doll for her.  As soon as Cassie takes possession of the doll, she notices that it seems to resemble her but gives it no further thought.

Jack notices that Cassie is under the doll's spell and that the doll is growing larger and taking on a more human appearance.  Meanwhile, accidents surround Cassie and her friends.  Jack believes the doll is cursed, but can he convince Cassie that she must get rid of her prized possession?

Some of the events are quite unsettling.  One scene in particular disturbed me, as it involved the death of a beloved animal.

This is an excellent book.

In Dark Forces #4, Devil Wind, Peter and Mary enjoy their afternoon sailing until they enter a mysterious cove.  While inside the cove, fog envelops them, and the two young people become separated.  Peter has a terrifying experience that he cannot remember later.

Peter begins acting strangely, and Mary researches the history of the area in order to find out what is happening.

This book is a bit gruesome.  Let's just say that it involves animal mutilation.  The details are not described, but the reader can easily imagine the scene.

I enjoyed this book.

I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin

I purchased a set of 10 Lois Duncan books on eBay.  The books are from 2010.  I was not aware until after I received the books that I had purchased revised editions.  Lois Duncan revised the text of each book to include references to modern technology.  She also made some other minor changes, such as to clothing styles.

At first I was annoyed that the books are revised, but then I decided that I did not care. Ultimately, I greatly enjoyed reading the revised books.  I especially enjoyed that each book has an interview with Lois Duncan in the back after the end of the story.

In I Know What You Did Last Summer, four friends are in a vehicle that hits and kills a young boy.  The driver insists that the friends not report the accident.  One year later, the friends learn that someone knows what happened, when this person begins harassing them.

I noticed a curious mixture of cultural references in this book.  Lois Duncan inserted modern references to webcasts and the Iraq War.  However, one girl works at the Wards department store, and that should have been changed.  Oops.  Wards no longer exists.

I enjoyed this book.

In Killing Mr. Griffin, some of Mr. Griffin's students decide to scare him to get payback for him being a difficult teacher.  Unexpectedly, Mr. Griffin dies, and the students cover up the crime.

While I enjoyed the book, I couldn't relate to the characters at all.  I also found the premise to be too disturbing to enjoy.  I am a teacher, and one of my former students is in prison for a sadistic murder.  It's sobering to think that someone I knew and interacted with on a daily basis later murdered somebody.

Furthermore, violence in schools against students and teachers has worsened in the last 20 years.  This book was published back back before school shootings became common. Reading this book was not escapism.  It was a bit of a downer.

I did overall enjoy the book, but I doubt I would ever read it again.

Hardy Boys Wanderer Books and Judy Bolton Picture Covers

I really enjoyed reading the Hardy Boys Wanderer books early this year, so much so that I decided that I wouldn't mind having them in hardcover with dust jacket.  However, I didn't want to invest the time and money to try to find them.  I have made no effort in trying to acquire any and figured that I would probably never own any of them.

This is because I know all too well how very difficult it is to acquire the complete set of Nancy Drew Wanderer books in hardcover with dust jacket in any type of decent condition.  I have been working on my Nancy Drew set since the early 2000s.  I do have all Nancy Drew titles from #57 through #78 in hardcover with dust jacket, but a few could still be upgraded.  While I enjoyed reading the Hardy Boys Wanderer books, I am not interested in spending years and a lot of money building a set of them in hardcover.

I spotted a small bulk lot of Hardy Boys books in which some books appeared to be hardcover books.  In my recent post about the hardcover Nancy Drew digest books, I stated that you should always "be observant" when looking for books.  That's how I find good books.

I clicked on the listing and examined the photos.  I saw a mixture of hardcover and softcover books, and I determined that the hardcover books all had dust jackets.  I purchased the lot and ended up receiving 11 Hardy Boys Wanderer books in hardcover with dust jacket and a Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Super Sleuths book in hardcover with dust jacket.

None of the books are library discards, which makes the purchase simply outstanding. The cost was also very inexpensive.

I will end up selling the extra copies of #78 and #79 as well as the Super Sleuths book which is in worse shape than the one already in my collection.

By the way, I still don't intend to seek out the remaining Hardy Boys Wanderer books in hardcover with dust jacket, but I wouldn't mind for more of them to fall into my hands.  I am very happy with the ones that I now have.

These books are like other items in my collection that I own due only to sheer luck. That's why I have owned the scarce Tom Swift game since 1998, and I don't even collect Tom Swift.  I just can't make myself part with the Tom Swift game.

I also happened upon a bulk Nancy Drew lot that contained four Judy Bolton picture cover books, #35, 36, 37, and 38.  I purchased the lot.  The lot was priced fairly for what it contained.  I received that lot today and was astonished about the excellent condition of the Judy Bolton picture cover books.  I knew immediately that all four are in better condition than the copies in my collection.

Here is a photo of the new books on the left and the four from my collection on the right.

I have owned the four on the right since 2002.  Prices for the high-numbered Judy Bolton picture covers were still quite steep back then.  Those four books cost me a total of $370.93 in 2002.  It is sickening to think that they cost that much and are worth just a fraction of that amount now.  The most sickening part is that I will be selling them and will likely get no more than half that amount, if even that much.

The upgrades only cost me around $20 each.  There is a law about collecting that holds true most all of the time:  The upgrade will cost less.  There are exceptions, but in my collecting history, the upgrades have almost always been much less expensive than the first copies purchased.

Dark Forces #1 The Game and #2 Magic Show

In Dark Forces #1, The Game, Julie and Terri are identical twin sisters, but their lives are changed when Julie is paralyzed in a car accident.  Julie feels sorry for herself and begins playing with a Ouija board in her room at night.  Julie becomes possessed by an evil spirit, and Terri must find a way to help her.

I like the little cultural references that appear in books from the 1980s, since those were my formative years.  On page 25, Terri reflects, "All of a sudden it occurred to her that they didn't make red M&Ms anymore.  She hadn't seen one in years."

So true.  We didn't have red M&Ms at that time because of the health scare with red dye #2. M&Ms never used red dye #2, but they discontinued that color for 11 years.  My favorite M&Ms are green, orange, yellow, and brown. That's the way it was in the 1980s, and that's the way it should be.  The blue and red ones never have looked right to me since they weren't around when I was young.

The constant point of view shifting in the middle of all scenes makes it hard to remember which girl is which.  The book would have been easier to read if the chapters had alternated with each girl's point of view.

The resolution at the end of the book is too quick and easy.

I enjoyed this book.

In Dark Forces #2, Magic Show, Chris inherits a sorcerer's book of spells from a deceased magician.  Chris begins using the book and quickly gains power.  Unknown to Chris, a spirit is using him to get revenge.  Lucy knows that her boyfriend is in danger, but can she help him?

On page 22, Chris asks Lucy to play a game of Asteroids with her.  Yes!  I played Asteroids probably hundreds of times in the early 1980s.

This is a very good book.

Scholastic's Point Horror Series and Fear Street

I have already mentioned how I read one R. L. Stine book as a teenager and did not care for it.  I decided to give Stine another try and purchased some of his books.  I also purchased some of Diane Hoh's Nightmare Hall books and some other miscellaneous teen books.

The books seen in this picture are the books that I sampled that are the main subject of this post.

It did not go well.  I tried to read all of them, but I only read enough of three of them to be able to list those books on my list of books read in 2016.  Even the three that I read were partially skimmed.  The other five books were skimmed until partway through and then abandoned without finishing them.

Seven of the eight books are Scholastic books.  This gives me little confidence in any teen horror book published by Scholastic aside from the ones written by Richie Tankersley Cusick.  I will probably try to avoid all Scholastic teen horror books from now on other than Cusick.

Let's start with R. L. Stine.  I cannot stand his writing style.  That must be why I did not like Blind Date when I read it as a teen.  I realize that many of you love R. L. Stine, but the allure of his books completely escapes me.  I think if I had been introduced to Stine's books at a much younger age than 16 to 18, I might have enjoyed them.  I suspect that most of us who did not read Stine as teens are unable to enjoy them as adults when reading them for the first time.

I find Stine's characters and their behavior to be obnoxious.  The characters in Stine's books go into hysterics over nothing.  They scream at each other and get scared often when nothing is wrong.  Stine's writing is repetitious with lots of short sentences, all designed to take up lots of space.  Here is an example.

To be fair, most of the text isn't as bad as this example.  However, I have a low tolerance for this style of writing, and examples like this are scattered throughout each of Stine's books.  This writing style is too much like books for very young children, and I am not interested in those kinds of books.

I tried four different Stine books and enjoyed none of them.  I did enjoy some parts of some of the books, but not enough to want to read more of them.

I tried Diane Hoh—or at first, I thought I did.  I began reading Nightmare Hall #2 The Roommate.  I couldn't believe how similar the style is to R. L. Stine.  I felt like I was reading another Stine book, so I looked at the copyright page.  I discovered that the book was actually written by Nola Thacker.  Okay, so Diane Hoh wrote a bunch of books, but some of Hoh's books were really written by Nola Thacker.  Here is the most awful part of The Roommate, and it reads just like R. L. Stine.

Somebody please save me!  I wasn't feeling too good about the Nightmare Hall series, but I wanted to read one actually written by Diane Hoh before making a final decision.  I started reading Nightmare Hall #3, Deadly Attraction, which is credited to Diane Hoh on the copyright page.  Too many characters are introduced too fast, and I found no reason to care about them.  The text isn't nearly as choppy as Stine and Thacker, but I still didn't like it.  The girls are shallow and only interested in hunks who are also shallow.  Spare me.

I decided that I wouldn't be reading any more Stine or Nightmare Hall books.

I tried The Vampire's Promise by Caroline B. Cooney.  The story is hard to follow, switching between characters and between past and present scenes for all the characters.  I couldn't keep anything straight and quickly grew bored.  Actually, I was bored from the first page.  I gave up within the first 30 pages since it wasn't worth it.

I tried Junior High Private Eyes.  This book actually reads the most like a normal book of all of these books.  Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting, and I abandoned it as well.

After I photographed the books for this post, I tried Camp Fear by Carol Ellis, which is another Scholastic teen horror book.  Too many characters are introduced all at once.  I can never keep up with a plot when an author does that.  Despite my confusion, I tried to forge ahead, and then I gave up.  Authors who can write well avoid throwing a bunch of information at the reader all at once.

Finally, I tried The Accident by Diane Hoh.  It is okay, and I was able to get through the entire book.  However, I won't ever read it again.

The bottom line is that I won't be keeping any of these books, and at least I don't have to worry about building a set of R. L. Stine books.

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.

Strange Buyer Questions

Potential buyers who ask strange questions, especially ones that are unnecessary, are always concerning to sellers.  Fortunately, most of these buyers do not make a purchase.  For some reason, they like to contact sellers and ask questions that are already answered in the item description.  It's like they aren't really interested in the item, but they need for the seller to answer a question before they can let it go.

I recently had a prospective buyer ask me two questions.  The first question was whether the price written inside was in ink or in pencil.  The second question was for me to "be more specific as to the 'light wear' " that I described.

It's really hard for me to answer the second question without being snarky.  I am also always quite concerned when I receive these kinds of questions.  I immediately checked the buyer's feedback where I determined that this buyer has an above average number of problems with sellers.  This buyer leaves negative and neutral feedback on a somewhat regular basis.  While the buyer might have genuinely had more difficult sellers than the average buyer, it is always concerning to see a buyer with an above average number of problems.

When I answer these kinds of questions, I word my response in such a way as to hopefully dissuade the buyer from purchasing the book.  I told the buyer, "The price inside is written in pencil. However, I believe part of it is heavy enough that it will not erase. The penciled price is on top of another erased price that did not erase completely. So it won't be possible to completely remove all traces of the prices."  That was how I attempted to dissuade the buyer.

In regard to the buyer's first question, I tried not to be snarky.  I wanted to write, " 'Light wear' is wear that is light."  I also wanted to write, "Look at the pictures."  I refrained, but what I wrote wasn't much different.  I replied, "Light wear is wear that is minor rather than major. You can see the light wear in the picture. Hover your cursor on the photos to view them large. You can see a small amount of white showing through at the very ends of the spine and corners. That's the light wear."

The buyer did not purchase the book, which was fine with me.

Some buyers ask for me to take additional pictures of the book or jacket.  Most of the time, I understand why.  One buyer wanted a photo of a certain illustration inside a Three Investigators book.  I assume that the buyer was seeking a variant.  That makes sense.  Other buyers want photos of the front and back flaps of the dust jacket.  I understand this request as well.  The best way to make sure a price code is either black or red is to ask for a picture.  Sometimes it is also easier just to request a photo than to make certain that a seller gives the correct last title in the series list.

Then there are the other picture requests.  One buyer asked for me to take "random pictures" of several pages from different parts of the book with no explanation as to the purpose of the request.  I was given no information about which pages I should select for the "random pictures."  I assumed that the buyer probably wanted to know about the paper quality or wanted to check for water damage, but I would have appreciated the buyer giving me an idea as to the purpose of the request.  I photographed some random pages, and as expected, the buyer did not purchase the book.

I have had several prospective Hardy Boys buyers ask me to take pictures of the pre-text list, title page, and/or copyright page, telling me that they are seeking a certain printing.  I am not nearly as knowledgeable about the Hardy Boys series as I am about Nancy Drew, so in each case I looked in Hardy and Hardy Investigations to see what I didn't know that I should have mentioned.

Strangely, I could find nothing special about those pages in the books about which the buyers inquired.  I don't know what the pictures were going to reveal about the books. Perhaps some additional information has come to light about some books, and since I am not active in Hardy Boys groups, I don't have that information.  In any case, I am left perplexed and wondering whether some of the picture requests are just to see if I'll take the pictures.