Adam Cesare

When he's not holding down a dead-end job or lurking in his mother's basement, Tony Anastos spends his time shooting ultra-low-budget horror flicks. After meeting his sexy fame-hungry coworker Anna, he sees an opportunity to launch his career into cult stardom. But when Tony's plan to jolt their next film's Kickstarter into overdrive calls for real blood, he will sacrifice the last bit of his humanity for a shot at recognition. But it makes sense. Look at him. The stuff he makes, I mean, he's the first one you expect.

The thrills and chills are far from over in the third novel from Bram Stoker Award winner and master of scare, horror legend Adam Cesare. Quinn has just survived yet another bloody run-in with the murderous clown Frendo, but somehow still she knows this won’t be the last. Tired of being hunted and seeing innocent people hurt, Quinn believes the only way to beat the horror is to take justice into her own hands--and stop the Frendo followers herself. Little does she know that this path will take her across cornfields and state lines, to where she will have to face the most dangerous and bloody menace True believers. It’s an all-new tale in this terrifying trio series about the villains inside us all, from the master of slashers and suspense, award–winning author Adam Cesare. Clown in a Cornfield  was 2020’s Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

Set a year after the first book, it looks at how the surviving characters are dealing with fame and infamy when a new threat, wearing an old clown mask, reaches out to upend their lives. "And if you had any favorite characters in Clown in a Cornfield, I'm preemptively sorry. #FrendoLives" - Adam Cesare

Aaron Fortin is new in town. He drives a brand-new Acura—a gift from his parents for uprooting him in the middle of senior year. Showing up on his first day at the local public school in that nice of a car? He knows he’ll never blend in, and he doesn’t care to try. The car, the new kid mystique, he can use all that… Crystal Giordano carpools to the same school in her friend Trevor’s beat-up van. In the van along with Crystal and Trevor are Paul, Harmony, and Gayle. Crystal’s technically part of their misfit group, but most of the time, she feels like she’s the only one who doesn’tfit. When Aaron Fortin sits at their lunch table, Crystal can see he’s not who he says he is. But how big of a fraud is Aaron Fortin? Crystal clumsily exposes Aaron and becomes his target, falling victim to his insidious campaign to erase her. Only then does she discover who he truly is—and it’s so much worse than she thought. As her friends begin to follow him one by one, Crystal wonders if she can protect them or if his influence is just too strong. Please note: This Audible Original contains graphic violence and themes of drug addiction and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

HarperCollins has acquired Adam Cesare's YA debut, Clown in a Cornfield, a horror novel about a group of teenagers struggling to escape from a murderous clown in a small midwestern town that refuses to let go of its outdated ideals—no matter how high the cost. Publication is set for summer 2020.

Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it until graduation. She might not make it to morning. Quinn and her father moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.

Can anything stop a creature that won’t stop growing? Sam Taylor just wants a friend. Is that too much to ask? His only mistake is finding that friend in Felix, a lab mouse that Sam rescues from the top-secret facility where he works as a janitor. Shortly after his rescue, the mouse begins to change, to swell. There’s something new growing underneath Felix’s fur. Growing very fast. Holed up in a roadside bar, four survivors—a woman who’s lost everything, her drug dealer, a tribal police officer, and a professional gambler—are all that stand between the rampaging beast and the city of Las Vegas. But as the monster keeps growing—and eating—how long until it’s able to topple the walls protecting them?

Who better to repel a body-snatching alien invasion than a group of teenage horror nerds? Billy and Tom are best friends, but each knows that at the end of the school year they'll be moving in different directions. But why not go out with a bang and throw one last video night? They can invite some girls over, order a pizza, then maybe try and fight the alien infection that's taken hold over their suburban town. It's The Breakfast Club meets The Night of the Creeps in this slime-drenched '80s horror romp. "Hit that first chapter. It’ll hook you, and the next time you look up, you’ll have swallowed the book. It’ll be nesting inside you like a seed, like an egg, like an invasion." -Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels "The momentum keeps building. The stakes keep escalating. The monsters just keep getting worse and worse, the catastrophic mayhem more juicy and hopeless. Best of all, the writing moves like a greased torpedo, compulsively readable as it rockets through your brain." -Fangoria "If you put together the gore, action, monsters, and sense of excitement that made '80s horror movies so great, you'll only have about half of what makes Video Night a must-read tome for horror fans." -Horrortalk