Prom Nights From Hell

Far from gauzy, rose-colored clichés, the prom nights depicted in this anthology are surreal, scary, and often populated with monsters and zombies. A well-known author for young adults contributes each of the five long stories. In Meg Cabot's, "The Exterminator's Daughter," a high-school student chases down a vampire before he can claim his next victim on prom night. In Stephenie Meyer's "Hell on Earth," a prom is nearly destroyed by warring biblical demons; then dreamy half-angel Gabe comes to the rescue. The tone in each story wavers between glib camp and chilling terror, just like a teen horror movie. Several stories include some sexy innuendo; in Michelle Jaffe's "Kiss and Tell," the narrator reads about "Tantric tongue tricks" and imagines a handsome older man "without his shirt but with a pitcher of maple syrup and a big . . . stack of pancakes." Like many anthologies, this one is uneven, but there is plenty here to amuse older horror fans, particularly those with a cynical view of prom night...