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All of the Christopher Pike books featured in Netflix's 'The Midnight Club'
If you're a fan of Christopher Pike's books, The Midnight Club is chock full of plenty of his other stories too. We run them down.
If you're a Gen Xer or Millennial, there's a good chance you grew up reading the YA novels of Christopher Pike. His horror and thriller titles, like Slumber Party (1985), Witch (1990), and The Visitor (1995), amongst many others, were books that transitioned generations of young readers into the more adult worlds of Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Anne Rice. In fact, one of those readers was writer/director Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass) who, as a college grad, wanted to adapt Pike's 1994 novel, The Midnight Club, into a movie. He got nowhere with the right but he never gave up.
Time and fate finally caught up to the dream, as Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy turned The Midnight Club into a Netflix series for Netflix which premiered on Oct. 7. Wanting to honor even more of Pike's large library of beloved titles, the pair got the rights to include several more of Pike's books and fold those stories into the main spine of the series. Each one is used as individual stories that the terminal teens tell one another in their secret society meetings at Brightcliffe Home hospice. Some are close to the source material, and others are more riffs on the book's major themes distilled for the series.
If you have a shelf full of Pike books at home (or in your mom's attic), you'll likely remember the narratives as they conjure up some major nostalgia. And even if Pike is new to you and the shorter tellings have you intrigued, SYFY WIRE can help with this handy breakdown of which stories land where in each episode so you can chase them down for a creepy, season-appropriate Halloween read.
Episode 3: Kevin’s Story - The Wicked Heart (1993)
In the TV series, leukemia patient Kevin (Igby Rigney) tells a story that is one of the few in the series to play out over three separate episodes: 3, 6, and 10. Based on Pike's 1993 novel, The Wicked Heart, Kevin tells a frightening tale of a teen serial killer. When he preys on the best friend of a local woman, she is compelled to find out who is murdering and why.
Episode 4: Sandra’s Story - Gimme a Kiss (1988)
For cancer-diagnosed teen Sandra (Annarah Cymone), she shares a noir tale of revenge. It's based on Pike's 1988 book, Gimme a Kiss, which is a tale of nautical murder that spurs one of the teens involved to get revenge on those who created the deadly situation.
Episode 5: Amesh’s Story - See You Later (1990)
Eagle-eyed Pike fans should catch that Episode 5 actually crams two Pike book titles into the story told by terminal cancer patient, Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota). It's about a guy who embarks upon playing a seemingly impossible video game. The deep Easter Egg of the episode is that the game central to the story, The Starlight Crystal, is actually the title of Pike's 1996 novel of the same name. And in the TV series, the story is changed quite a bit from the source material, See You Later (1990). In the book, Mark is a guy with a huge crush on a girl who already has a long-time boyfriend. When he meets a couple who want him to get the girl of his dreams, he finds out they want more than he assumed.
Episode 6: Ilonka’s Story - Witch
The second story to span across multiple episodes is the one told by Ilonka (Iman Benson). A teen with cancer, she's open to experimental treatments, and she relates the core story from Pike's 1990 book, Witch. In it, the young spell caster fails to heed the warnings of her Wiccan mother and reaps the dark results of trying to change the future.
Episode 8: Natsuki’s Story - Road to Nowhere
Suffering from terminal cancer and depression, Natsuki (Aya Furukawa) tells the story that fuels Pike's 1993 cautionary thriller, Road to Nowhere. In it, a young woman picks up two hitchhikers on a dark and stormy night and they end up being the worst mistake of her young life.
Episode 9: Spencer’s Story - The Eternal Enemy
In the most sci-fi story of the pack, Spencer (Chris Sumpter) who is gay and has AIDS, tells his friends the story that is the basis of Pike's 1993 novel, The Eternal Enemy. In it, a teen figures out that their new family VCR has the unexpected extra function of being able to record the nightly news from the near future.
The Midnight Club is now streaming on Netflix.
Looking for more scares? Stream tons of great horror movies on Peacock.
