It was the perfect weekend…for murder.

Lara thought the ski trip should be a blast.  The old gang was getting together again for the first time in years.  What could be better than six single girls out for sun and ski and après ski–plus a huge house and a warm fire?  Even with the memory of what happened the last time, it looked like the perfect weekend.  Until things started to go wrong…

It wasn’t much at first–a snowman that melted when it shouldn’t have, a weird phone call.  But then somebody went out for “one last run” and didn’t come back.  And the storm they heard about on the radio was getting worse.  Lara thought everyone was up there for a good time.  But she was beginning to realize that someone was up there for murder.

Dedication: None.

First Published: 1985, Scholastic

Cover Artist: Unknown (Scholastic), Paul Davies (Hodder)

Trivia: Pike's first published novel. He was 28 years old.

Pike Speaks: "I did not set out to write young adult.

I wrote Slumber Party just simply to get published.

"I had been writing for six years, and getting rejected. My agent thought I was a good writer, but I couldn’t sell anything. Even when I wrote [adult novel] The Season of Passage, it was rejected. Then my agent called me and said there was this one publisher — he said they were doing a series of teen thrillers, teen horror books. He said, “Can you write one?” I wrote Slumber Party initially as a supernatural story. There was a girl in the book who could start fires with her mind.

"Now my agent took the book, and he went to the publisher, and this is where I’m not sure it’s totally true, but the publisher came back to my agent and said this book is too good to put in our series, and he said, “You should take it elsewhere.” My agent sent it to Jean Feiwel who was at Avon then. Jean read it and asked me, could I remove the supernatural element, just make it a straight thriller? And I said, “Sure, I mean, if you want it to be on the moon, I’ll put it on the moon. I just want to get published.”

"SS: And it all took off from there?

"CP: Jean Feiwel left Avon and went to Scholastic and suddenly Avon said, “We’re not interested in this guy’s books, whoever he is.” And so I thought “Oh, my God. I told everybody I’d publish books, and I’m not published anymore.” But when Jean did finally get settled at Scholastic, she bought Slumber Party right away, and then she bought Weekend." (via Electric Literature)