Black Chalk

Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates, 346 pages

Fourteen years ago, six Oxford students started playing a game that focused on dares, consequences and general tomfoolery...or so they thought. As the game wore on, the dares got bolder, brasher, and altogether meaner, taking a toll on the students' lives and friendships. Told through a series of journal entries that bounce between the early days of the game and today, Black Chalk is a slow-burning, high-tension novel that hints at dire consequences for the players of the game. Throw in an unreliable narrator (the reader can't be sure which character's even writing it until a third of the way through the book) and you've got yourself a spooky story in the vein of The Bellwether Revivals or Donna Tartt's The Secret History.