A walking, talking, wisecracking skeleton who solves crimes with magic and a very good line in sarcasm. There aren’t many heroes like Skulduggery Pleasant.
Half the fun is that he’s funny and genuinely creepy at the same time. One minute he’s bickering with his teenage sidekick Valkyrie Cain, the next they’re up against something that wants to wipe out the world.
If you’re after books like Skulduggery Pleasant, it helps to work out what they actually loved. The skeleton detective and the banter? The magic? The monsters? The proper scares?
It’s also a long series that gets darker and older as it goes, so for a 9 to 11 year old you might want something pitched a notch younger. Here are five I’d hand a Skulduggery fan next. They’re all fantasy books for older readers, and every one is on Little Reads.
Books like Skulduggery Pleasant to read next
Darkmouth (Shane Hegarty)
Darkmouth
Finn lives in Darkmouth, the one town where Legends still break through. Legends being the polite word for enormous, human-eating monsters.
He’s twelve, he loves animals, and he is not a natural fighter. He’s also the last Legend Hunter left, which means stopping a hungry Minotaur is somehow his job.
This is the closest match here for the funny-and-frightening thing Skulduggery does so well. Big monsters, real danger, and a hero who cracks jokes mostly because he’s terrified.
First in a four-book run, so there’s plenty to keep going with.
Amari and the Night Brothers (B.B. Alston)
Amari and the Night Brothers
Amari’s big brother Quinton has vanished, and everyone but her has given up on him.
Then she finds a ticking briefcase in his wardrobe. Inside is a nomination to try out for the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, a secret organisation where magicians, fairies and aliens turn out to be completely real.
To find Quinton, she has to win a place against kids who’ve grown up knowing all this.
If it was the hidden magical world running alongside ours that hooked your reader, the sense that there’s a whole secret system out there, this has it. Plus a missing-person mystery to pull them through.
The Strangeworlds Travel Agency (L.D. Lapinski)
The Strangeworlds Travel Agency
Every suitcase in the Strangeworlds Travel Agency opens onto a different world. Step inside, and you’re somewhere else entirely.
Twelve-year-old Flick wanders in by accident and gets invited to join the magical society that travels between them. Then she finds out the world at the centre of it all is coming apart. Streets and whole buildings are simply disappearing.
This one’s for the reader who loved the worldbuilding, the feeling the story could go anywhere next. Magic and mystery with a proper ticking clock.
Dread Wood (Jennifer Killick)
Dread Wood
Four classmates who aren’t really mates get hauled in for Saturday detention. Then their teacher gets dragged underground, and the caretakers won’t stop humming Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Something is out there, it’s getting stronger by the minute, and none of them ended up in detention by accident.
This is the one for the scares. Creepy and funny in the same breath, the way the best bits of Skulduggery are, and the gang have to actually work together to get out in one piece.
There’s more from Jennifer Killick in the same funny-horrible vein too.
A step up: Brightstorm (Vashti Hardy)
Brightstorm
For the reader ready to sink into something bigger, this is a good next step.
Twins Arthur and Maudie Brightstorm get word that their explorer father has died trying to reach the bottom of the world. Worse, that he died a thief. They don’t buy a word of it.
So they sign on to a rival expedition aboard a winged sky-ship called the Aurora, partly to win the race, mostly to clear his name and find out what really happened down there.
Longer and richer than the others here, with that same pull of a mystery you have to see through to the end.
Never short of the next adventure
Moving a child off a series they’ve worn out can feel like a big ask. Especially one as big as Skulduggery.
Hopefully you’ve now got a couple of starting points to try. And you can read every one of them for free on Little Reads.
One honest thing before you download. Little Reads is built for children who already love reading. If yours is still finding their feet, an app with phonics and reading levels will suit you better. We’re a library, not a classroom.
But if you’ve got a reader who finishes the last page and immediately wants the next book, that’s exactly who we’re for. Little Reads is a digital library of 3,000+ hand-picked books for children who love to read. Start them on Darkmouth or Amari and the Night Brothers and see where they go. £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
If you enjoyed this, you might also like books like Artemis Fowl and what to read after Harry Potter.