Skullduggery Pleasant is fantastic young adult Gothic series. Derek Landy's books concern a young woman and her teacher as they battle monsters, schemes, and all sorts of vile evil across Ireland. It's definitely horror in genre, and also a lot of fun.
The teen heroine takes the awesome name Valkyrie Cain, and rapidly learns hand-to-hand combat, generating and throwing fire, then necromancy. Her friend Skullduggery is an animated skeleton with superb fighting skills, a sense of humor, fine fashion sense, and a scary war record.
Together they explore and either befriend or battle haunted houses, monsters assembled from dead body parts, Lovecraftian gods, genocidal generals, conspiracies, and assassins. Plus vampires, possession, mutilation of living bodies, being buried alive, and confronting the possibility that one's inner self is a psychopathic murderer.
Which means nearly continuous action, but also fine comic dialog and charming characters. The latter include a geomantic Louisianan assassin, the world's most loveable bookseller, and a magical tailor.
I don't know why these books aren't better known in the US. Could it be because they're Irish, or too scary-looking?
(thanks to my evil daughter)
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