Dead Scared

Winner of Eric Hoffer and Readers' Favorite Awards


Who knew the dead have more to fear from the living than the living have to fear from the dead? Certainly not seventeen-year-old Chris Chandler, not before his family moved to Bemishstock, Maine in the autumn of 1985. His father’s job is to close plants for Allied Paper Products of Wisconsin. Bemishstock is his fourth crumbling town in six years, and each one has resented and harassed the Chandlers more hatefully than the previous. Even Chris will admit that his family’s odyssey across America has turned him into a lonely, brooding nutcase, and he has only survived the soul-sucking experience by remaining virtually invisible. Then suddenly one day, after a couple of totally stupid mistakes, Chris finds himself trapped between two nightmarish forces—a defrocked chiropractor turned grave robber, and the cruelest and most beautiful girl in his class. Like the cemetery guardians of old, he must defeat both or end up a corpse himself and cursed for all eternity.


Praise for Ivan Blake

Winner of Eric Hoffer and Readers’ Favorite Awards - Dead Scared


“In this gloriously macabre novel—the first installment of a series—Blake channels Stephen King and 1980s cult films like Re-Animator…Fans should claw at Blake’s windows for more graveyard tales after this delightful series opener.” —Kirkus Reviews


“An intense and brooding tale that delivers…plot had me instantly hooked…writing is often lyrically lovely, but this never gets in the way of the action and horror that this book is steeped in…eagerly anticipating the next book in Blake’s The Mortsafeman Trilogy…” —Readers’ Favorite