The Weirdies Get Weirder

Barnacle, Melancholy and Garlic Weirdie have made a home of Deadeye Manor with Miss Emily, which is the closest thing to stability a family of monsters is likely to get. Then, against all logic and most laws of nature, the triplets' parents return from the dead and announce that they want their children back.

What follows is a custody battle, which means a lawyer, which means money, which means the triplets throw themselves into a series of increasingly ridiculous fundraisers to pay for one. It also means a courtroom, and the courtroom, for reasons nobody adequately explains, is full of raccoons.

Michael Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm and NERDS, writes middle-grade comic horror with a completely straight face: the ghouls are ghoulish, the jokes are relentless, and the emotional question underneath is a real one about who counts as a parent. The Weirdies Get Weirder follows directly from the first book and is best read after it. It was also produced as an Audible Original narrated by Kate Winslet.