The Bizarre Bazaar: Down A Dark Path by Daniel Nayeri & Lesley Vamos

This is a positive review, I promise, I just need to get something (not necessarily negative) about the publishing industry off my chest first.

The titling of kids’ series books, and especially kids’ graphic novels, continues to confuse me. Should we call it first by the series’ name and number as we do with most graphic novels and popular kids’ series, with the actual title usually an afterthought? Or do we go by the book title as with adult prose, with the series name usually an afterthought? I know these are all mostly marketing concerns but every time I have to review one of these volumes, my brain snags on the issue and then I have to write several dozen words on the subject, lol (and it’s not like I’m entirely separate from the marketing machine any more either, so it is a subject of genuine concern to my livelihood.)

What makes it especially odd in the case of this title is that Down A Dark Path is actually the second book in a series that started with Mirror Town. You don’t have to have read the latter to enjoy DaDP, tho I do feel that there’s a clear allusion in the text here that I would have been better prepared for had I read the series debut. That said, I really liked this volume, and very much hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of these fun, creepy and frankly quite gorgeous hardcover books! Seriously, unwrap the dust jacket to see the painted covers: they are a treat!

Anyway, the framing device of the series involves a store called The Bizarre Bazaar that pops up in random towns. It’s run by Babs and Bruno, a rather acerbic pair who seem to have more fun warning customers away from buying their wares than actually selling anything. Babs is probably a fairy and Bruno is probably a djinn: both have definitely been stuck with the store and their partnership for obscure reasons that they don’t really like to talk about (tho Babs does blab about Bruno’s background in this volume.)

But even as they warn readers against touching the goods, they tell the weird tales behind the more curious items, such as a winsome angel-shaped nightlight that is also… a vampire relic. That’s a result of something passing strange that happened to two sisters, Lucy and Frida Bufort, who lived on a remote farm in the Carolina Inner Banks. July is a month of heat and boredom, especially when their parents won’t let them go visit the nearby town. But when something in the woods starts ripping out trees and scaring the animals to death, the girls will have to gather up all their courage to solve this mystery and figure out how to stop more bad things from happening.

The story is delightfully clever, with twist hidden inside twist, both in the A plot and in the framing narrative. I loved how Babs and Bruno kept editorializing the girls’ tale, too, injecting humor in what might otherwise be just a little too scary for younger readers. But what I loved the most was Lesley Vamos’ art, which is wonderfully expressive and plays with focus in ways I very much enjoy. When I got to the back of the book and read where she listed the wonderful Vera Brosgol as one of her influences, I was completely unsurprised.

I’m going to give this to my own tween kids to read next, as they’re definitely at the age of appreciating horror stories. Will update this review with their responses, but I absolutely loved it, to the point where I’ve put the first book on my To-Read list too.

The Bizarre Bazaar: Down A Dark Path by Daniel Nayeri & Lesley Vamos was published January 13 2026 by Little, Brown Ink and is available from all good booksellers, including