Halloween and Dark 1:
If you you still thinking all those spooky thoughts, go no farther than Dark 1 by Dora Benley, pen name of Linda Cargill. It is perfect for Halloween and things that go bump in the night. It, too, was part of the Point Horror Line.
Bianca goes babysitting one day at Little Katie Shipley’s house and finds herself immersed in a murder. Upstairs she hears the housekeeper screaming. The baby starts to bawl. She runs to save the child just as the maid falls to her death. Bianca flees out the door only to see the killer at the top of the stairs.
After that night Bianca cannot remember the killer’s face. But two years later when her memory starts to return she is locked in the restroom and threatened at the movie theater with what will happen to her if she remembers and tells the police. One day when she is staying after school the killer confronts her there, too, after he turns off all the lights. Bianca is horrified at what will happen when the inevitable occurs and she once again sees the face at the top of the stairs.
Dark 1 is the first volume of the Dark Series. If you liked this young adult thriller by Dora Benley you will like the successor volume Dark 2. Dark 1 and Dark 2 are part of the Scholastic Point Horror Series first published by Scholastic UK and now brought to you by Cheops Books LLC in time for Halloween. Can’t get enough of the Dark? Read Dark 3: Special Edition with the biggest surprise ending of all time. Or read all three suspense novels in a single volume: Dark: A Trilogy.
Teens rarely need an excuse to stay up late, but The Dark by Dora Benley would give pause for thought to even the most steely-nerved youngster. A genuinely gripping horror story. Approach with caution. The Sunday Independent, Dublin, Ireland
