NIGHT TERRORS

These 11 new stories from award-winning authors of YA mysteries may be set at night but are hardly bedtime reading: Patricia Windsor (``Moon Kill') and Theodore Taylor (``Grind of an Ax'') offer some traditional homicidal maniacs; ghosts in Chris Lynch's ``Bearing Paul'' and Richard Peck's ``Girl at the Window'' lure young people into deadly danger; and Annette Curtis Klause puts a real ``Bogey Man'' in the basement for her unfortunate eight-year-old character to find. Not all of the stories contain supernatural elements—to Harry Mazer's sullen, unnamed lad, the power a loaded gun brings is a ``Beautiful Thing''—or even terror: A seemingly disembodied voice in Norma Fox Mazer's ``The House on Buffalo Street'' leads an unhappy tenant to a new friend, and in Joan Aiken's ``Monkey's Wedding,'' a quirky nonagenarian loses her son, foils a gang of thieves, and gains a great-grandson, all in the same evening. The authors append comments on short story writing and high points in their careers. A sturdy collection, short on gore and explicit violence, long on suspense and imagination. (Short stories. 9-14)