SOLVED. Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA)-style double book: 1) Haunted house, and 2) Alien secret invasion. Quite scary. Starts with choosing abandoned house vs. city you're traveling to. Read in 1990s/late 1980s. [s]

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

I read this in the late 80s or more likely the 90s. I think it's an official "Choose Your Own Adventure" brand book, but maybe it was from another line. It was definitely a "double" book, containing two almost-completely separate adventures. You made a choice at the very start that took you to one or the other: do you approach the abandoned-looking house off the road, or do you continue to the city which was your intended destination? It splits off from there into the two "books" and they don't intertwine further. Maybe if you survived one adventure it gave you the option of continuing to the other one.

The haunted house half of the collected book was quite scary; I read it, IIRC, as an older teenager or young adult and it was genuinely frightening. I think it involved real monsters or ghosts or demons, not trickery.

The alien story is, I think, one in which you discover that aliens are secretly taking over a town/city, in the style of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I have been through the lists of Choose Your Own Adventure books and have not been able to re-find this 2-in-1 title.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Bump.

[Kris]

Some of the CYOA-type lists on Goodreads:

- Choose Your Own Adventure: Young Readers: https://www.goodreads.com/series/276746
- New CYOA: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
- Twistaplot: https://www.goodreads.com/series/1010...
- Pick-a-Path: https://www.goodreads.com/series/1228...
- You Choose: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9...
- Modern Choose Your Own Adventure: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...

[Kris]

I copied a few plot and book details to the header/ topic title. Feel free to edit it.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Kris wrote: "Some of the CYOA-type lists on Goodreads:
..."

Thanks, I went through all those lists without success. But, the "Which Way" book series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/1186...) looked the most appropriate. I haven't found any 2-in-1 books from them but the book I remember sounds like it might be a combination of The Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror (at least the haunted house portion from that one) and The Shadow Stealers.

I want to leave this post open, though, since I can't confirm this is right yet (and have not found double-book publications in that series yet).

A good resource to share in this general topic: Damien's Gamebook Web Page - includes many CYOA-type books and adventure gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy and all offshoots.

https://gamebooks.org/

[Rainbowheart]

Steer Clear of Haunted Hill?

The Ghostwriter team from the television show solve the mystery of a haunted house in two "eyewitness accounts" that begin at either end of the book and end in the middle.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Rainbowheart wrote: "Steer Clear of Haunted Hill?

The Ghostwriter team from the television show solve the mystery of a haunted house in two "eyewitness accounts" that begin at either end of the book and..."

Nowhere close, but thanks for the attempt anyway.

[Rainbowheart]

Figured it was a long shot, but thought I'd mention it just in case.

Could you have read this book as late as 1999, or should we be cutting off searches earlier in the decade?

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

I doubt it was later than 1994. The more I look at the black slime book the more it might be the one. It has multiple storylines per the description. Copies seem to start at $60 though so I’m not likely to get one just to see.

[Natalie]

I don't know the book but I know that Ian Livingstone does 'choose your own adventure' books?

[Bee]

It sounds a lot like a R.L. Stine Give Yourself Goosebumps - Choose your own adventure book. I remember those frequently having two different stories and you choose the main story path in the very begining. I am not sure if those were published too late though.. I remember reading them in the mid 90's I think but worth looking into if you havent already! I specifically remeber one about body snatchers or some sort of creepy aliens and also remeber reading a ton with haunted house stories.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Natalie wrote: "I don't know the book but I know that Ian Livingstone does 'choose your own adventure' books?"

I'm very familiar with his books of that type, particularly the Fighting Fantasy line, requiring dice and pencil/paper character stat tracking. The book I'm thinking of is definitely text-only, like typical CYOA.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Bee wrote: "It sounds a lot like a R.L. Stine Give Yourself Goosebumps - Choose your own adventure book. I remember those frequently having two different stories and you choose the main story path in the very ..."

Thanks Bee. I looked through that series list, nothing rings a bell and the cover art and target age skew younger than what I think I'm looking for.

I'm willing to mark this "possibly solved" with The Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror, but unwilling to verify due to the current book price on the resale market.

[Capn]

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/invasio...

Just FYI - it wasn't listed on Book Finder. :)

[Simi]

Someone else had a hard time finding a copy but bought one and added pictures and a scan of it.
https://mattfife.com/?p=8701

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Simi wrote: "Someone else had a hard time finding a copy but bought one and added pictures and a scan of it.
https://mattfife.com/?p=8701"

I must have missed your post, shoot. Anyway, I finally got a copy of The Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror and can confirm, this is the book I was thinking of. I'm slightly bothered that my memory of it was of a double-size CYOA, much thicker book when the reality is a skinny little thing. I guess it's just packed full of adventure that made it seem larger.

Officially SOLVED. Thanks, all!

[Kris]

Great! Glad you found your book, Marc. Thanks for the update.

The Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror (book 10) of the Which Way Books series by R.G. Austin