In 1997, Eerie, Indiana the Book Series, was a short-lived continuation of the original supernatural series of the same name that aired on NBC over half a decade before it. It was a Children's Literature series released on a monthly basis with each entry clocking in at around 120 pages, similar to the ever-popular Goosebumps. The series followed the new adventures of Marshall Teller and Simon Holmes for the first 12 entries, detailing the exploits of Marshall, a transplant from New Jersey whose family has moved to the small town of Eerie, and Simon, an Eerie native, as they investigate the weirdness that inhabits this town. As the other residents are oblivious to the supernatural nature of the town to the point of denial, Marshall and Simon are left to their own devices to uncover the truth behind both the individual happenings around Eerie, and the secret behind it all. They deal with everything from escaped wild west criminals from cryogenic storage to Bigfoot eating out of the trash.
Then, as of Book 13, Switching Channels, Mitchell Taylor and Stanley Hope of Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension fame took over as the main characters following both a dimensional and perspective shift. This lasted a further seven books before getting canned in the final entry, We Wish You an Eerie Christmas.
Allegedly, these books are set a mere one year after the end of the original series, which should make the present year 1993. However, the authors opted to make it the present year of the time, 1997. This isn't the last time they'd play fast and loose with the continuity of the TV show. Authors Mike Ford, John Peel, Jeremy Roberts, Sherry Shahan, and Robert James decided to make the series their own and tell their own overarching story, instead of continuing down the rabbit hole set by the original's creators.
There were 17 books in total over the course of the series' run:
- #01: Return to Foreverware
- #02: Bureau of Lost
- #03: The Eerie Triangle
- #04: Simon and Marshall's Excellent Adventure
- #05: Have Yourself an Eerie Little Christmas
- #06: Fountain of Weird
- #07: Attack of the Two-Ton Tomatoes
- #08: Who Framed Alice Prophet
- #09: Bring Me a Dream
- #10: Finger Lickin' Strange
- #11: The Dollhouse That Time Forgot
- #12: They Say
- #13: Switching Channels
- #14: The Incredible Shrinking Stanley
- #15: Halloweird
- #16: Eerie in the Mirror
- #17: We Wish You an Eerie Christmas
This series contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Several, but some specific examples are:
- Mr. Radford (played by John Astin in the TV series) is noted to look like Gomez Addams by Marshall and Simon.
- In the first book, Return to Foreverware, Marshall and Simon take an after school job cleaning out the attic of a couple by the name of James and Martha Stewart.
- Adults Are Useless:
- Taken to further extremes here than it ever did on TV. The adults and most of the children of Eerie are so oblivious or in denial that the entire town can start slowly turning into humanoid plants and they wouldn't notice.
- Averted in Return to Foreverware when Marshall gets help from the now adult twins Bert and Ernie (the sons of Betty Wilson from the original Foreverware episode) to rescue Simon and stop the Stewarts from kidnapping any other boys to replace their dead son Rodney. At the very end, they also reveal they've been working on a microwave machine that can potentially restore the aging process on the boys the Stewarts kept trapped in their basement.
- Brainwashed: The villain of book 10, Chef Lucy, is discovered to have been grinding up old junk that was created during the 1960s, then mixing it into her food and serving it to people; those who eat it are brainwashed into acting like they're hippies in the 1960s.
- Call-Back: Both of the first two books are sequels to episodes from the original series.
- Rather fittingly, in keeping with Foreverware being the first episode of the TV show, Return to Foreverware begins the book series.
- Bureau of Lost is a sequel to The Losers.
- Christmas Episode: Book 5 and book 17 are both set during the Christmas season in their respective versions of Eerie.
- Death of a Child: Book 1 features a case of a family who tried to avert this. Rodney Stewart, Martha and James' son, had a heart condition and Mrs. Stewart thought keeping him young with Foreveware would help. Unfortunately, Bert and Ernie theorize the process did more harm than good, because when Rodney got out of his container on Christmas Eve to wait up for Santa Claus in 1976, he died.
- Doctor Whomage: In book 4, Marshall's class gets a new student named Jazon, who is temporarily living in town with his grandfather, Dr. Foreman. It turns out Jazon's a time traveler living in town under false pretenses, to boot. And his home is even disguised as a blue box. Though, since this is America, the only available blue boxes are outhouses, unfortunately.
- Fountain of Youth: Book 6 involves a scientist who's apparently created a means of restoring people's youth. It turns out he's stealing the youth from people who are actually young.
- Halloween Episode: Book 15, which revolves around Mitchell and Stanley working to thwart an alien invasion on Halloween.
- Novelization: While not marketed as one, book 13 is essentially a novelization of the first episode of Eerie Indiana: The Other Dimension (and the only such novelization in the series).
- Shout-Out: In book 15, it is mentioned that M.T. Coffin is doing a reading at the bookstore. The author Mike Ford happened to be a writer for that series.
- Who Would Want to Watch Us?: In book 3, Simon thinks if they get everyone to know about Eerie, they'll make a TV show about them. Marshall tells him to "get real".
