Ink of Nightmares

The final instalment in the Book of Screams series.

Tanya and Niah lure writer Joel Southland to a local coffee shop to find out his scheme. But soon, customers are collapsing around them, lulled into an unnatural sleep--Southland’s (and the evil ink’s) doing. When Southland tells Tanya he needs her help to draw the ink back to its origins, it seems her only option. However, the ink is cunning. And it will take all Tanya’s smarts to try to trap it...or else she might be trapped herself.

Woven into the main story are other nightmares the ink has been collecting, including a story of a boy haunted by the long hair clogging a drain, two friends hoping to get famous by livestreaming their hot-pepper-eating challenge, and Gory Gary, a gruesome ghoul who pops up instead of Bloody Mary because he’s bored. It’s a mix of frights and chills and laughs, perfect for middle-grade readers.

The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Jeff Szpirglas is the author of several works for young people, including the horror collections Book of Screams, Pages of Doom, Tales from Beyond the Brain and Tales from the Fringes of Fear. He is also the co-author, with Danielle Saint-Onge, of a number of Orca Echoes titles, including Super Switch and Shark Bait!. Jeff has worked at CTV and was an editor at Chirp, Chickadee and Owl magazines. In his spare time, he teaches grade school. Jeff lives with his family in Kitchener, Ontario.

Andrew P. Barr is an illustrator whose work has appeared in magazines, newspapers and movies, as well as on movie posters and T-shirts. In 2022 the book Wild Outside, which he illustrated, won the Yellow Cedar Award and the Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award. Andrew lives in Oakville, Ontario.