Horror!

Amulet. Book one, The stonekeeper by  Kazu Kibuishi.
“After the tragic death of their father, Emily and Navin move with their mother to the home of her deceased great-grandfather, but the strange house proves to be dangerous. Before long, a sinister creature lures the kids’ mom through a door in the basement. Em and Navin, desperate not to lose her, follow her into an underground world inhabited by demons, robots, and talking animals. Eventually, they enlist the help of a small mechanical rabbit named Miskit. Together with Miskit, they face the most terrifying monster of all, and Em finally has the chance to save someone she loves.” (Syndetics summary)

Diary of a wimpy kid : Greg Heffley’s journal by Jeff Kinney.
Greg records his sixth grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.(Syndetics summary)

EJ12: On the ball  by Susannah McFarlane.

 In this installment Special Agent EJ12 must discover the spy at SHINE’s top secret training camp, meanwhile her alter ego Emma Jacks worries about getting into the soccer team. Sometimes it seems easier to save the world…

The faceless ones by Derek Landy

In the third book of this series Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie have to solve a whole bunch of murders, stop the Faceless Ones from returning, and oh yeah, save the world by Friday. This blend of humour and horror has earnt several awards.

The gates / by John Connolly.
“In this frothy fantasy thriller from bestseller Connolly (The Book of Lost Things), 11-year-old Samuel Johnson witnesses an inadvertent intersection of science and the supernatural while trick-or-treating at the Abernathy household in Biddlecombe, England. Something nasty reaches through an atomically engineered portal to Hades and possesses four suburban sorcerers. From that point on, Samuel finds himself battling hordes of invading demons and desperately trying to convince disbelieving adults that the impending end of the world is not a fancy of his overactive imagination. Connolly plays this potentially spooky scenario strictly for laughs, larding the narrative with droll jokes, humorous asides and the slapstick pratfalls of Nurd, an amusingly incompetent subdemon whom Samuel ultimately befriends. Though billed as “an adult book for children,” this light fantasy will strike even adult readers as divertingly whimsical. (Oct.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.” (Publisher Weekly)