Staff Picks
Gothic Literature
- Kristin A.
- Monday, October 05, 2020
Collection
Featuring windswept moors, crumbling towers, abandoned castles, and maybe a ghost or two, Gothic Literature is all about atmosphere. From English manors to Southern mansions, these often supernatural tales merge deep passions with chill dread. Just be sure to read them with the lights on and don't answer the strange knocking at your door.
Northanger Abbey
Published in 2003
Catherine Morland meets all the trappings of Gothic horror and imagines the worst. Disaster does eventually strike, as it does in the real world as distinct from the romantic one, but without spoiling the wonderful atmosphere of this story.
Wuthering Heights
Published in 2011
This is the story of the savage, tormented foundling Heathcliff, who falls wildly in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other. A book of great power and strength, it is filled with the raw beauty of the moors and an uncanny understanding of the terrible truths about men and women. It is an understanding made even more extraordinary by the fact that it came from the heart of a woman who lived most of her brief life in the remote wildness of the moors.
My Cousin Rachel
Published in 2013
Daphne du Maurier's classic novel of lust, suspicion, and obsession?now a major motion picture starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin. Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in Philip as his heir, and Philip grows to love Ambrose's grand estate as much as he does. But the cozy world the two construct is shattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There he falls in love and marries a mysterious distant cousin named Rachel?and there he dies suddenly. Jealous of his marriage, racked by suspicion at the hints in Ambrose's letters, and grief-stricken by his death, Philip prepares to meet his cousin's widow with hatred in his heart. But when she arrives at the estate, Rachel seems to be a different woman from the one described in Ambrose's letters. Beautiful, sophisticated, and magnetic, Philip cannot help but feel drawn to Rachel. And yet, questions still linger: might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death? And how, exactly, did Ambrose die? As Philip pursues the answers to these questions, he realizes that his own fate could hang in the balance.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Published in 1991
Written in 1831 before Hugo was forced to flee from Louis Napoleon's France. In this novel, Hugo paints a vivid portrait of medieval Paris. Quasimodo, the one-eyed, hunchbacked refugee; Esmeralda, the dancing gypsy girl, threatened by the gallows; and a world where chaos is in charge--Hugo captures them all in this timeless, almost Gothic, piece of literature.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
Published in 1999
The Monk
Published in 2015
In what is widely considered to be the first Gothic novel, a monk must resist a temptation that could consume his soul Ambrosio has developed a reputation across Madrid for his piety and selflessness in his role as a monk. Left on the abbey's doorstep as a child, Ambrosio took quickly to monastic life, and his fellow monks pronounced him a gift from the Virgin Mary. Despite his virtue, his status as the abbey's favorite son is put in jeopardy with the arrival of Matilda, a woman with a terrible secret who disguises herself as a monk to be closer to Ambrosio. A sensational Gothic horror novel that is as stunning to readers today as it was two hundred years ago, The Monk is a shocking rumination of the nature of good and evil, and a morality tale that explicitly details the consequences of desire. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Beloved
Published in 2006
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. After the Civil War ends, Sethe longingly recalls the two-year-old daughter whom she killed when threatened with recapture after escaping from slavery 18 years before.
The Fall of the House of Usher
And Other Tales
Published in 2006
A collection of fourteen of the author's best-known tales of mystery and the macabre includes "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," in which a visitor to a gloomy mansion finds a childhood friend dying under the spell of a family curse.
Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus
Published in 2008
Twenty-five years after its original release, Wrightson's illustrated version of Shelley's "Frankenstein" is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements by any artist in the field. This edition includes Stephen King's introduction and the original 47 full-page illustrations.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Published in 1998
The author's classic novel about the Faust myth, in which a young dandy trades his soul for eternal youth.