Thirteen Chairs

by Dave Shelton

Overview

A spine-tingling collection of ghost stories

When a boy finds himself drawn into an empty house one cold night, he enters a room in which twelve unusual-looking people sit around a table. And the thirteenth chair is pulled out for him.One by one, each of those assembled tells their ownghost story: tales of doom and death; of ghostly creatures and malevolent spirits; of revenge and reward. It is only at the end of the night that the boy starts to understand what story he must tell . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545823111
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	07/28/2015
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Lexile:	930L (what's this?)
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Dave Shelton is the creator of the comic strip GOOD DOG, BAD DOG. His debut novel for children, A BOY AND A BEAR IN A BOAT, was shortlisted for numerous awards in the United Kingdom and won the Branford Boase Award--an award given to an outstanding children’s or young adult novel by a first-time writer. He lives in Leicester, England with family. You can visit him online at http://www.daveshelton.com/.

Read an Excerpt

From THIRTEEN CHAIRS:Jack stands in the dark on the landing of the old house, and looks at his feet. He is outside the last of three doors, the one that is underlined with flickering light. He doesn't move. He stares down at the twin crescents of light reflecting on the toes of his shoes. He looks at the thin highlights along the edges of the bare floorboards and at the pattern of the grain in the wood in the pale puddle of light that leaks under the door. He has been here for minutes, his hand on the door handle, debating whether or not to go in. Common sense insists that he must not, because there is no way of knowing what might be inside. But curiosity insists the opposite, for the same reason.And Jack is a curious boy.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Thirteen Chairs:"Thirteen chills I'll never forget."—R.L. Stine*"Fans of chills and things that go bump in the night will want to read this uniformly excellent work—with the lights on."—School Library Journal, starred review"An enjoyable collection of ghost stories, perfect for reading by flashlight."—Kirkus Reviews"These tangled yarns will continue to ensnare readers' thoughts even after the final page is turned."—Horn Book Review

From the Publisher

2015-04-15
Summoning the courage to open a creaky door inside a spooky old house, Jack finds himself in a candlelit room with 12 strangers sitting around a table. Someone brings him a chair, and thus begins an evening of storytelling as, one by one, Jack's companions share haunting tales, each extinguishing a candle when done. Thirteen tales—Jack's is the last—are framed by brief introductions from the storytellers, characters in their own rights, lending depth to this lightly illustrated collection of stories within a story. In "Let Me Sleep," a man is haunted by the voice of someone he's robbed and killed until he returns to the burial site. "The Wrong Side of the Road" features a taxi ride that ends with terrifying similarity to a crash the passenger caused a year before. A character with a "craggy face" tells a tale of "darkness inside darkness" in "The Patchwork Sailor." A man writes himself to death in "Unputdownable," and in "Snowstorms," one Antarctic explorer after another mysteriously disappears. The tales become increasingly eerie as the candles are blown out and Jack realizes what his own role is. An enjoyable collection of ghost stories, perfect for reading by flashlight. (Short stories. 9-13)

Kirkus Reviews