Our Blog

Scary Stories About Books to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark haunted an entire generation. The combination of spooky folklore and terrifying imagery had a way of getting under your skin. Even today, people are fascinated with them. So, in celebration of the new movie by producer Guillermo del Toro, Quirk has decided to release its own collection of scary stories. But these aren't just any old tales of darkness and woe. These, dear reader, are Scary Stories about books themselves!

Posted by J. B. Kish

Horror Holiday: We’ve Got the Perfect Reads for Your Upcoming Summer Vacation

We’ve all been there. It’s summer. The weather is finally warming up and your long-awaited vacation has just kicked off.  But then, of course, something kind of spooky happens. Maybe the cruise bartender has a sinister scar running down his face. Maybe the cabin you rented suddenly feels a little too secluded. Or perhaps you just ran out of gas on a long and desolate highway. And then someone finally says it: “This is totally how a scary movie would start!” Luckily for you, most vacations don’t play out like a horror film. But if you’re still in the mood for a scare in your downtime, you can always bring some along with you. Here are our top recommendations for scary novels to bring on your upcoming summer vacation.

Posted by J. B. Kish

Scooby-Doo and Other Things That Should be Adapted for Adults

If you haven’t picked up a copy of Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids, then please, for the sake of your childhood, go grab a copy today. The premise of Cantero’s novel is brilliant and simple: what would Scooby and the gang be like today if they were all grown up? The answer? According to Cantero, they'd be—well—let’s just say they aren't the Saturday morning goofballs we remember. In this parallel universe, Cantero’s take on our favorite cartoon sleuths is twisted, hilarious, and at times, delightfully disturbing. We absolutely loved it! Which got us thinking, what other series from our childhoods should be adapted for an adult audience?

Posted by J. B. Kish

Pop Culture/Literary BFFs Who Go Together Like PB&J

Editor's Note: To finish out 2018, we're revisiting some of our favorite blog posts from the past year. This post was originally published on 4/3/18. 


They say best friends are never more than a phone call away. But It’s 2018, so we should probably revise that to “never more than a FaceTime, Snapchat, or VR sesh away.” Even then, these fancy new methods of keeping in touch really only apply if you exist in the same dimension as your bestie, which to be frank, might not always be the case. Before passing away, Stephen Hawking co-published a final paper on the possibility of a multiverse, prompting us to wonder, can we really even say who our true best friends are? For all we know, they might not even exist in the same time or space. We tested the theory, and sure enough, in the case of these pop culture and literary icons, their perfect matches weren’t even found in the same story, let alone universe.

Posted by J. B. Kish

The Best Jobs in Horror

Photo by Felipe Hueb from Pexels

Horror is hard work, y'all. People underestimate just how exhausting it is. Not only do you have to battle masked serial killers, deadly space aliens, or haunted videotapes, but then you’re expected to clock in by nine if you want to keep your job at the local [insert movie trope here]. That hardly seems fair! Still, work is one of those inevitable things, regardless of whether or not you made it to the final cutscene. So at the end of the day, if you’ve just got to pay the bills, here are a couple of the best gigs in horror movies. Feel free to grab an application. Most of them are hiring…

Posted by J. B. Kish

Downtime: What Our Favorite Lit Characters Do Behind the Scenes​​​​​​​

[source: Stills From Films]

Ever since The Lord of the Rings extended DVDs delivered hours of behind the scenes footage, we’ve been obsessed with learning more about what our favorite actors do to pass time on set. Bungee jumping, drinking, exploring New Zealand—and that was just during The Fellowship! Film stars aren’t the only ones that have fun, though. It can take years for an author to complete a book. That’s a lot of downtime. So we reached out to some famous literary characters to learn more about what they did while waiting for the final pages of their story to be penned.

Posted by J. B. Kish