Full of chills and twists, a twelve-year-old boy is thrilled that he’ll get to play endless games at his family’s arcade, but soon realizes he’s in the fight of his life when he’s forced to save himself and his possessed Uncle from a sinister video game.
GRIN
by D. W. Gillespie
Delacorte Press, August 2025
(via Park, Fine & Brower)
Danny is spending a week with his Uncle Bill who runs a massive retro arcade called PixelWorks. His only plan is to play as many games as possible from open to close, but he wasn’t expecting to find the Holy Grail of arcade collectors, a gruesome looking game titled Grin.
Anyone who plays the game becomes surprisingly violent, and soon with the help of his friend Jodi and a knowledgeable videogame streamer, Danny realizes that Grin holds the soul of a dead serial killer.
Soon, the killer makes the jump into Bill’s body, and it’s up to Danny to figure out a way to stop him for good.
Born and raised in Middle Tennessee, D.W. Gillespie wrote his first short story in second grade. It involved (unsurprisingly) monsters wreaking havoc on some unsuspecting victim. Some things never change. He began writing seriously after taking a creative writing class in college, and he’s written steadily ever since. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two kids, and on dark nights, you might find them huddled around a campfire sharing spooky tales.
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