The chills just keep coming in Allen’s third collection of insomnia-inducing original shorts. If readers aren’t kept awake by the opener, in which young Ethan discovers that there really are “Night Things” in his bedroom, or the closer, in which another bedroom boojum—identified only by a long-nailed, skinny hand in the illustration—threatens to stop “Hiding,” they should at least be left wide eyed and likewise disturbed by the tales in between: of a murderous bicycle, a bloodthirsty piano, a hungry old sleeping bag, a maimed ghost eager to collect replacement fingers, and a child who finds her own face on a Toasty-Tart (“You Are What You Eat”).

In the fine tradition of the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, the illustrations, too, are appropriately dark and creepy, from a scatter of blood-smeared pages of music (with an all-too- relevant note about a “sharp” passage) to a class picture of sixth-grade zombies. Best read in daylight.

— John Peters, Booklist