Bones and Berserkers (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales #13): 13 True Tales of Terror from American History

Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales #13

by Nathan Hale

Warning—frightening (and true) stories ahead! Author-illustrator Nathan Hale tells some of the scariest tales in US history in Bones and Berserkers , the 13th book in the #1 New York Times  bestselling graphic novel series.

Bones and Berserkers is the unlucky 13th book in the New York Times bestselling Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, and you know what that means? It’s time to gather around the gallows and tell the spookiest stories in US history!

In this chilling collection, learn about the devil baby who terrorized New Jersey; a haunted well full of restless Confederate soldiers; a demon cat whose appearance has been an omen for some of the darkest days in American history; and a massacre by a murderous butler whose motives remain unknown to this day.

Full of a frightful mix of folk tales and facts, this newest entry is sure to fascinate readers . . . if they’re brave enough to read to the end.

Genres: Graphic Novels, History, Middle Grade, Horror, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Historical

Kindle Edition

Published September 9, 2025

About the author

Nathan Hale is the New York Times best-selling author/illustrator of the Hazardous Tales series, as well as many picture books including Yellowbelly and Plum go to School, the Twelve Bots of Christmas and The Devil You Know.

He is the illustrator of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge and its sequel, Calamity Jack. He also illustrated Frankenstein: A Monstrous Parody, The Dinosaurs' Night Before Christmas, Animal House and many others.

(He is not the author of Extinction Earth or the other apocalyptic titles listed. That's a different Nathan Hale. If someone with "librarian" status would disambiguate those titles for me, I'd appreciate it.)

Learn more at www.spacestationnathan.blogspot.com

Reviews

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Triskaidekaphobes, beware! This unlucky 13th volume of the Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales series is dedicated to the creators of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and given over to horrific and/or gory short stories from history, legend, and fiction.

Topics covered: the Jersey Devil, body mutilation from radium poisoning, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog," ghosts, carved up corpses, eerie Gullah-Geechee folklore, a Nordic saga of berserkers, a notorious California outlaw, the U.S. Civil War, and a mass murder in Wisconsin.

I prefer Hale's long-form deep dives, but this collection of little tales is certainly a welcome digression.


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Hazard Level: Neon/Ghastly -- [Prologue] -- The Thirteenth Baby [Part 1] -- A Sip of Radithor -- The Demon Cat -- Who Is Dead in the White House? -- Hop-Frog [adapted from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe] -- The Well -- The Thirteenth Baby Strikes Back [Part 2] -- The Boo Hag -- The Head in the Jar -- The Butler Who Went Berserk [Prelude] -- The Champions of King Hrolf -- The Butler Goes Berserk -- Death by a Thousand Butts -- The Thirteenth Baby Rides Again [Part 3] -- [Epilogue] -- [Fact or Fiction] -- Harzardous Tales Presents Great Moments in Reading from the Author's Life: Grandma's House, Ivins, Utah, July, 1986 -- Did You Like This Book? [Read More Short Stories] -- Bibliography

[Kasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be my favorite installment! It is just as scary as the first two pages warn, best for middle school readers and some really tough 5th graders.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review being submitted to School Library Journal for an upcoming SMS article.

[Rebekah Burnette · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐ (Rounding up!) Loved the stories, but Death By a Thousand Butts was proooooobably my favorite 😂😂😂 But for real, the end with the advocacy of anthologies and short stories is *chef's kiss* 🤌 I have an irrevocable love for short stories. They are just my JAM 😍🖤

[Dinah King · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this series, but I missed the cohesive longer histories he usually writes. the mix of fact and fiction fits the description of creepy American stories, but is certainly a departure from the regular series. also, the stories this book is also WAY darker than others in the series, in my opinion. yes, even darker than cannibalism. as always, I leave the Nathan Hale series learning something amazing and being surprised by the story, especially the true stories.
I would recommend this book for a kid looking for something scary and isn't afraid of some guts and gore.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading these books since I was a tween, and it's great to see that Nathan Hale is still writing and drawing absolute bangers. This volume was so good that it might have knocked down my previous favorite (Donner Dinner Party) to number two.
This book is pretty graphic and will probably be frightening to young readers, it's really fantastic if you can handle it though.

[julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolute SUCKER for this series 🥲

[Natalie Haggard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightfully spooky addition to Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales. It definitely earned its Neon Green hazard label.

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the regular books as opposed to the graphic ones, but that is perhaps just me being an old person! Still, I do like this series, and I appreciate the notes at the end telling what was true and what had been stretched and what the stories were based on.

[Becky B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nathan Hale and his fellow narrators are hanging out beneath the gallows in a thunderstorm and decide to swap scary stories from folklore or horrifying true tales. The share the folklore behind the New Jersey Devil, a guy who went crazy over Radithor, the legend of the demon cat said to lurk beneath historic sites in Washington D.C., Abraham Lincoln’s dream that someone would die in the White House days before he was shot, Edgar Allen Poe’s folktale “Hop-Frog”, the legend of the Civil War soldiers’ ghosts in the well in Fox’s Gap, Maryland, the Boo Hag folktale from the Southern US, the history and legend surrounding Joaquín Murrieta (who inspired the Zorro stories), a Norse legend about King Hrolf, and the true crime history of the butler who murdered many at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.

I’m grateful that Hale put a warning in the first page spread of this book, because it is way more gory than normal for the Hazardous Tales. It also includes a lot more folklore than usual. He does a good job of clarifying what is true, what has kernels of true history, and what is folklore. It was not my favorite Hazardous Tale book, mostly because I didn’t enjoy the folklore additions. I found several of the true history stories interesting (usually morbidly interesting, honestly), so I’d rate this a 2.5. I would be very hesitant handing this to just any kid, even fans of the other Hazardous Tale books. It feels more teen appropriate, and even then, only teens who can handle gory and disturbing history/folklore.

Notes on content:
Language: There might have been a couple minor swears. I don’t remember.
Sexual content: None. The Jersey Devil backstory involves a woman giving birth of a baby that has a tail and wings. No sexual details.
Violence: Battles, acts of vengeance, outright murders, exposure to radiation are all part of stories includes. There are illustrations showing the radiation effects on a man’s face with half of his face gone, there’s an illustration showing a man’s butt getting chopped off in a battle, and the butler attacking people with an axe at Taliesin.
Ethnic diversity: Black Americans/enslaved Africans, white Americans, white Europeans, Hispanic Americans.
LGBTQ+ content: None specified.
Other: There’s some hauntings by ghosts, the Jersey Devil is said to be a “spawn of Satan”, and the Boo Hag is a creature that steals people’s skins and wears them.

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucky number thirteen ⚡and Nathan Hale's history centric graphic novel series is still going strong. My eldest has loved history for many years and even though he's in his late teens at this point, one thing I can count on is each year without fail he must have the new Nathan Hale. He reads a myriad of genres, but this series has its own shelf, the older titles worn from many readings. These can easily be read as standalones if a particular subject stands out. Bones and Berserkers should be given mostly to the middle school ages and up because of the content. This deals with folklore and facts and while interesting it's not always pretty. ⚠️There are warnings on the opening pages for young or sensitive readers don't take them lightly.⚠️

What I love about Nathan Hale's work is that as much as I read myself, I still learn things that I didn't know. I can't tell you how many fascinating stories history has to share that we rarely hear about at all and if we do the presentation is so dry that I'm tuning out so I know young people are too. Bones and Berserkers is comprised of thirteen short tales that touch on different parts of history. Some tidbits include: the inspiration behind Zorro, the White House/capitol demon cat, radium poisoning, Norse myth, the first Native American novelist and more. The humor paired with art makes for an accessible read that takes the pressure off. It's more fun than it is hammering facts home. The presentation impresses me every time.

This series as a whole is one, I often recommend to reluctant readers. Sometimes non-fiction is an underused accelerant to ignite a love of reading.

*Now Available*

Thank you to ABRAMS Kids | Abrams Fanfare for providing an ARC via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Darla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five disburbing stars for this unlucky thirteenth installment in the Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales.

Please do skip this one if you are under the age of ten. If I were to make the decision of where to shelve this one, I would put it in the YA section.

As an adult and a fan of the Hazardous Tales, this was well worth the time I spent reading.

Here's why:

1️⃣3️⃣ stories with a good amount of creepiness and history entwined. See page 125 for a rundown on which parts were facts and which were folklore (or a silly add-on in the case of "Death By a Thousand Butts."
🥇🥉Congrats to Nathan Hale for his thirteenth book. According to a note on page 124, the artwork for this book was created in 68 days -- a personal record.
✍Hale takes a page to promote short stories. He includes tips on finding anthologies at your local library and bookstores. He loves the fact that if a short story gets boring, you can just skip to the next one.
📚There is a diverse range of stories and I recognized information from books I have read in the past like The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women and Loving Frank. My favorite was "Who is Dead in the White House" about a dream that Abe had three days before his assassination.
🥜Finally, have no fear. The peanut gallery is in rare form as the Nathan Hale from history waits out a rainstorm with the Hangman, the Provost, and Bill Richmond.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual collection of graphic novel short stories, telling a lot of historical gross-out tales, such as the woman who gave birth to a demon, and the bloke who drank so much radium cordial it ate the lower half of his skull away. It's an unusual selection, however – even dipping into fiction when it adapts a lesser-known Poe piece. In introducing some Norse myth it finds a midpoint between fact and fiction, and either way it aims to prove the merits of the short story compilation, full of the unexpected and unable to disappoint nearly as much as a lump of five prose novels that don't know how to end (its example).

But it's not flawless. The story of the Berserkers takes too long to resolve, and isn't alone in using too many pages. The framing material of four oddball characters waiting out a night-time storm by sheltering under a gallows, as you do, is really not that great, and must surely be tiring now if as I assume it's carried over from the twelve previous books in this series. I'd certainly had enough of them from what we get here.

All told this could have been a kind of more gruesome Ripley's Believe It Or Not, full of yuck and cringe moments of history. It's not, as it tries to be more literary and less sensational. That said we do still see skulls sliced in twain horizontally, so this isn't going to be loved by the most staid of librarians. Yet I can see some tweens, to whom it's marketed, wanting more blood and guts, and either more fantasy writing or more fact. I think I'm with those seeking more truth and less waffle here – three and a half stars.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

I haven't read the first 12 books in Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales series, but my students love his work and talk about it frequently, so I thought I would pick up his most recently published graphic novel just in time for spooky season. I can absolutely see why it resonates with my 5th and 6th grade students. The tone is silly and funny, but also dark in a way that I think appeals to tween readers who don't want to be pandered to. The book alternates between true stories and folktales; I personally preferred the true stories and wish he'd included more of those. For example, even though Hale specifically calls out the ableist language in the Edgar Allan Poe short story, he still decides to include it in this collection, a choice I don't necessarily understand. My other main point of critique is that I found the font difficult to read at times. Many of my young graphic novel readers are dyslexic, and I would have loved to see a more dyslexia-friendly, hyperlegible font used here. Still, I have already added this one to my classroom library and will be recommending it to my students, particularly those who enjoy nonfiction, horror, and graphic novels.

Thank you to Abrams Fanfare and NetGalley for my advanced copy.

[Flannery · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is not joking around with its warning label (and warning opening pages) this time. Younger/sensitive readers should skip. These are scary/unsettling stories which are meant to be scary/unsettling. This is ages ten and up. (the book acknowledges that the series is often read by kids as young as six or seven who are at a high reading level, and strongly dissuades those kids from this one. Listen to the label, people!) At sixteen, none of the stories really unsettled me except for one (about the guy's jaw rotting off because of radium, that is probably the most frightening illustration in this entire text), and that's because it was 100% based in real events (radium is SCARY y'all).
But, yeah, I enjoyed this one. Not the greatest for a history lesson (most of it is folklore, and the amount of times it discusses ghosts and demons and the like may be concerning to some parents), but I thought it was cool.

[Megan Gunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

We laughed (a lot) we cried (not really) we looked up information! My son and I read this together and absolutely loved it. I’m a pretty big scaredy cat and I didn’t have trouble with it. I love these books and so does my 11 year old. We had the privilege of seeing Nathan Hale speak in Nashville and I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to take advantage of that opportunity should it come your way. I saw him at NCSS a couple years ago and his presentation was a highlight of the conference. But for this reading where the kids were his target audience, I was floored. He was so kind and thoughtful to all of the kids and their awkwardness. He was so patient and genuinely listened and gave each child in his signing line his undivided attention. He didn’t hurry a single one of them, answering all their questions and treating them with such grace and respect. It was an experience my son and I won’t soon forget.

[Machaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

You could tell Nathan Hale had a fantastic time writing this, and I appreciated the stories he shared at the end about his love for short stories and specifically horror short stories. Also, kudos to him for seeing this opportunity for the 13th book and taking it. The stories were a very cool mix of fiction and non-fiction and some things in between, and I enjoyed the variety in the stories themselves. I found myself googling more information about most of the stories, and older kids are going to love how spooky and grisly these stories are - especially things like butts getting chopped off. It is definitely not for younger kiddos - there were even a few times that even I was peeking through my fingers at things, but I loved how Hale even set the atmosphere with his narrators. The angles that he drew Nathan Hale (the narrator) really set the tone for spooky campfire stories. An excellent spooky season read that I enjoyed even if it's not my usual reading fare.

[Roben · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the 13th Nathan Hale tale so you know what that means! Time to get spooky. The author was inspired by folklorist Alvin Schwarz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Thus - a delightful collection of some of the scariest stories in (mostly) American history - most have at least a shred of truth; some are completely true and at least one is completely made up.
There is a bit of gruesome - heads get chopped, faces get chopped, butts get chopped, and legends are created. The kids will love it!

I had not heard the Taliesin story and found the very true story of the berserk butler fascinating.
My favorite spooky book from my childhood was The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Stories, a collection of both funny and spooky compiled by folklorist Maria Leach. Remember The Golden Arm?

[Jessica Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up after reading in a librarian group that kids were bringing this back because they were terrified, and I loved the few in the series that I had read so wanted to see how gruesome it really was. Maybe I don't have enough to compare it to, but I didn't think this was too bad for the target audience (4-6th grade). I can see some kids being a little too squeamish, but I can also absolutely see kids who would love this and want more. There is an entire 2-page spread warning of the graphic nature of the book so kids know how gross it could get. I don't see a problem with this for the intended audience.

[Maggie Vallette · Rating 5 out of 5]

The newest book in the Nathan Hale series. This 13th book is full of scary fictional and some factual stories in American history. The story still has the comedic relief of the narrators that appear in previous stories. It was neat to meet Mr. Hale at an author event and he pointed out that the book is dedicated to the creators of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. This is very much a scary story that has some scary images, but really interesting stories. I know that this book will fly off the shelf and has come just in time for the spooky season.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short stories drawn from history and folklore. A balanced mix of fact and fantasy (and clearly indicating which is which), humor and horror. I love this series. Includes the story of Frank Lloyd Wright's butler, which Lorelai Gilmore relates with such spirit in Season 3 Episode 8 of Gilmore Girls.

So there were moments when I laughed out loud, and moments when I squinted at the pages in horror/disgust.

Robust backmatter.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars because not quite what I was expecting or am used to from this series. It was a lot more gruesome (so much so that I won’t let my youngest read it yet) and not all the stories here were true, in fact most are not. Still, I enjoyed the short story format, artwork, and spooky tales. Just, wouldn’t recommend this one along with all the others, especially not to anyone unfamiliar with the rest of the series or young/sensitive.

[Hannah Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

It does have a lot of violent visuals as other people have mentioned, but in the style of Nathan Hale it’s honestly not as bad as realism and it makes me admire how he was able to create the illustrations in such an intense way, and it is also enjoyable when the characters(the hangman and etc) are just as disgusted or creeped out as the audience which makes it an enjoyable experience for such a darker subject matter, makes me remember the Donner dinner party book.

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one feels a bit more juvenile (I mean they’re kids books, so I can’t be mad about it) and random and not all stories were equally interesting. I really enjoyed most of the first half (demon cat, sober Quaker, the zorro inspiration guy, and radithor) and the rest I didn’t particularly enjoy (although the art was incredible as always). I like the deep dives and facts more than the fictional tales.

Definitely won’t be sleeping on my belly tonight though.

[Skoote · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warning - this books is nothing like the others in the series. It is a collection of horror stories, some very loosely based on real events, some from folklore. My kids usually love this series, but they found this book terrifying. My 8 year old had nightmares. Readers beware. I wish I knew before I gave it to my kids to read.

[Ron Baumer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is kind of a hit or miss for me. Some of the stories were good, others were bad. The graphics are good overall. The book may appeal to some children, however on the whole I don't think the book was worth recommending.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Amanda N · Rating 1 out of 5]

Would love to post the photos of a woman birthing a demon baby that ends up killing all of its siblings etc. Also didn’t love the way she talked about her own family so negatively saying no more children no more mouths to feed. This is so far from all of the other hazardous tales books. 🤦🏽‍♀️rest of the series is good.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saw the author at Texas Book Fest - our kids love books and we’re captivated by his presentation. My son has read his books many times and he really wanted me to get acquainted with Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales and I’m glad I did. Loved it and looking forward to reading more. The author said he tries to find stories from history that are diverse and positive (not always easy to find).

[M Pod · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 because of my affection for the short story format.

Should have loved this. Not sure why I didn't. I haven't enjoyed the last couple of the Hazardous Tales series - something seems off. I don't know if the topics are less researched or Hale has lost interest, but there's a spark missing. Could be me, I suppose.

[Elyse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one just wasn't for me. I think some of the kids at school might like it, so I'm adding it to my to think about purchasing list. Short stories drawn out. Some parts were the usual formula but other parts were rather dark (which is why I think some kids at school would like it, they like scary books. I do not.)