The Fear Street series is renowned series of horror fiction, young adult, mystery, and children’s books. It is comprised of a total of 54 books, which were released between the years 1989 and 2015. The series has been written by a reputed American author named R L Stine. The author has penned this series for teenage readers as it features elements that tend to attract such kind of readers mostly. Stine has included many elements of horror and mystery in all the books. The success of the books in this series inspired another popular series known as the Ghosts of Fear Street. This too was written keeping in mind the tastes of the younger readers. According to Stine, the latter series’ books seem to be more like the books of Goosebumps as they consist of many paranormal adversaries such as vampires, aliens, ghosts, monsters, etc. The books are sometimes shown to have twisted endings. Author Stine put a halt to the series after writing a spinoff story in 1999. However, he decided to revive the series once again in 2005 by coming up with a 3 part mini-series. By 2010, the series had sold more than 80 million printed copies throughout the world. Stine continued penning the series in 2014 after halting it in 2005. In 2015, he had stated that he was approached by a production company for making a movie of his book series. The settings of the novels are done in a fictional city called Shadyside, located in Ohio. The primary characters are depicted as average teenagers, who come across malignant and paranormal adversaries. Some books are totally based on paranormal elements, while some others are written as just murder mysteries. The death scenes depicted in all the novels by author Stine are very gruesome and have lots of gore and blood. The series’ title derives its name from a fictional street in the fictional Shadyside city, which is turn gets its based on the Fear family. This family’s original name was Fier, but after it was believed that there was a curse on the family and that the name’s letters could be spelled as ‘fire’, it was changed to Fear in the 19th century by Simon Fier. However, the curse did not subside even after the name change. In fact, Simon and Anglica, his lovely wife, brought the curse to Shadyside when they shifted there after the end of the Civil War. The curse actually began during the Puritan times. Matthew and Benjamin Fier had burned a poor girl named Sunnah and her mom named Martha Goodse with allegations of witchcraft practice. In order to avenge the deaths, Sunnah’s father, William Goodse, had cursed the Fiers. This had brought death and misery to the earlier members of the Fier family. Even though the last remaining members had died in a fire, some Fears survived and this led to the beginning of the series. It is revealed in the later part of the series that it was actually a Fear brother who had survived the fire. All these events are mentioned in the spinoff series called Fear Street Sagas. The characters keep changing with each book. Some of the plots are repeated in multiple books as a means of linking the different stories together. Stine has generally described the plots as taking place between the late 1980s and early 1990s. As of 2017, it is reported that a movie based on this series is being scripted by Kyle Killen and will be directed by Leigh Janiak. Chemin Entertainment and 20th Century Fox are also said to be working on a different script for a film on the series.
R.L. Stine was born on 8th October, 1943, as Robert Lawrence Stine. He hails from Columbus, Ohio, and is sometimes known by the names Eric Affabee and Jovial Bob Stine. Apart from being a famous author, Stine is also a renowned television producer, executive editor, short story writer, and screenwriter. In the children’s literature genre, he is regarded as Stephen King. In his entire career span, Stine has penned hundreds of novels of horror fiction. Altogether, his novels have sold more than 400 millions of copies. Stine spent his earlier years growing up in the town of Bexley, Ohio. His family used to follow the Jewish religion. It was at the age of nine that author Stine took to writing. His first writing companion was an old typewriter that he had found from his attic. Stine completed his graduation from the University of Ohio State in 1965. He holds a BA degree in English literature. During his years at the university, Stine was made in charge of the editing of its humor magazine called The Sundial. Later on, he shifted to New York City in order to focus on his writing career.
The debut book of the Fear Street series written by author R.L. Stine is entitled ‘The New Girl’. It was released by the Simon Pulse publication in the year 2006, following its initial release in 1989. The book features the lead characters as Anna Corwin and Cory Brooks. At the start of the book’s story, it is shown that Anna Corwin has newly arrived in Shadyside High. Cory Brooks sees her as a pale, eerily beautiful, and blond girl. From the moment Cory lays his eyes upon her, he wishes to make her his own. Anna Corwin too develops feelings for Cory Brooks. Cory feels like drowning in the light blue color of her eyes and seems very desperate to get her kiss. Because of Anna’s beauty, Cory couldn’t think of anything else, but her. He even begins to lose his sleep and ditch his friends. The situation becomes so that everyone starts noticing the change in him. Later, Anna Corwin suddenly disappears. Cory tries very hard, but is unable to find her. Now, for getting a cure for the obsession of Anna, Cory decides to visit her house in Fear Street, in spite of knowing that the place is very frightening.
The next popular installment of the series is called ‘The Surprise Party’. It was also published by the Simon Pulse publishing company in 1990. Stine has depicted the important characters in this story as Evan, Jack Archer, Meg Dalton, Tony, Ellen, etc. At the beginning of the story of the book, it is depicted that a year passes after the death of Evan in the woods of Fear Street. Following this sad event, the gang of friends split up and Ellen shifted to some other place. Meg starts to feel the need of her best buddies and tries to get them back. But, everyone seems to have adapted to their new lifestyles. Even Tony, Meg’s own boyfriend, starts acting strange and moody. Then, the news comes that Ellen is about to visit Shadyside soon and Meg gets filled with enormous joy. She plans to call everyone and throw a surprise party on the occasion of the get-together. As soon as Meg finishes the preparations for the party, she starts getting bizarre phone calls with threatening messages. Meg becomes very much scared due to the violent threats, but doesn’t understand the need for telling her to cancel the surprise party. So, she sets out to find the reason behind this. Meg shows a daring courage for discovering the truth and does not even fear for her life.
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