Staff Picks
None More Goth
- Sara M.
- Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Collection
For some people, spooky season is just starting - but for others, spooky season never stops! Embrace the goth aesthetic with these classic and modern books, movies, and music and seek beauty in the darkness.
The Crow.
Published in 2011
Featuring Brandon Lee in his final, tragic performance, The Crow is the tale of young musician Eric Draven who, along with his fiancee, is murdered on the eve of their Halloween wedding. Exactly one year after their deaths, Eric is risen from the grave by a mysterious crow to seek out his killers and force them to answer for their crimes.
Dark Shadows. Collection 1, The Beginning
Published in 2012
Contains 35 of the series' rare, early episodes before Barnabas. Victoria Winters' journey begins as her train arrives in Collinsport. An orphan in search of her identity, Victoria is befriended by Burke Devlin. At the eerie Collinwood mansion, Victoria meets matriarch Elizabeth, her brother Roger, his son David, and Elizabeth's daughter Carolyn. David warns Victoria that she will regret she came to live at Collinwood and be his governess. Episodes 1-35.
The Damnation Game
Published in 2002
There are games so seductively evil, so wondrously vile, no gambler can resist. Amid the rubble of World War II, Joseph Whitehead dared to challenge the dark champion of life's ultimate game. Now a millionaire, locked in a terror-shrouded fortress, Joseph Whitehead has hell to pay.--From preliminaries.
Exquisite Corpse
Published in 1997
To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim. Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed ? or terminated. Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.
Wuthering Heights
Published in 2016
This is a graphic novel version of the story of Heathcliff, a foundling who falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and the complications of their relationship.
Great Expectations
Published in 2009
The orphaned Pip is serving as a blacksmith's apprentice when an unknown benefactor supplies the means for him to be educated in London as a gentleman of "great expectations."
Rebecca
Published in 1971
The new mistress of Manderley's Cornwall estate must constantly compete with the memory of Maxim de Winter's first wife, Rebecca
Down a Dark Hall
Published in 2011
Suspicious and uneasy about the atmosphere at her new boarding school, fourteen-year-old Kit slowly realizes why she and the other three students at the school were selected.
A Lush and Seething Hell
Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
Published in 2019
[The author] turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South -which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting,-- Adapted from dust jacket.
Carmilla
Published in 2019
Isolated in a remote mansion in a central European forest, Laura longs for companionship until a carriage accident brings another young woman into her life: the secretive and sometimes erratic Carmilla. As Carmillas actions become more puzzling and volatile, Laura develops bizarre symptoms, and as her health goes into decline, Laura and her father discover something monstrous.
The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories
Published in 2018
Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth a slimy, wavering tentacle... Perhaps no figure better embodies the transition from the Gothic tradition to modern horror than Arthur Machen. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, the Welsh writer produced a seminal body of tales of occult horror, spiritual and physical corruption, and malignant survivals from the primeval past which horrified and scandalized-late-Victorian readers. Machen's 'weird fiction' has influenced generations of storytellers, from H. P. Lovecraft to Guillermo Del Toro-and it remains no less unsettling today. This new collection, which includes the complete novel The Three Impostors as well as such celebrated tales as The Great God Pan and The White People, constitutes the most comprehensive critical edition of Machen yet to appear. In addition to the core late-Victorian horror classics, a selection of lesser-known prose poems and later tales helps to present a fuller picture of the development of Machen's weird vision. The edition's introduction and notes contextualize the life and work of this foundational figure in the history of horror.
Mexican Gothic
Published in 2020
An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes "a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror" ( Kirkus Reviews ) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico—"fans of classic novels like Jane Eyre and Rebecca are in for a suspenseful treat" ( PopSugar ). After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find—her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind. "A shiver-inducing tale combining touches of Northanger Abbey with bits of the Gormenghast trilogy . . . to create a fascinating atmosphere of dark dreams and intrigue."— Booklist
Beloved
Published in 2004
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.
Peepshow
Published in 2014
The album was both a critical and a commercial success in the US and UK and when the first single, the totally unpigeonholable 'Peek-A-Boo', appeared in July 1988 it was met with near universal acclaim.