Chilling Gothic Fiction
Explore a spine-tingling collection of chilling Gothic fiction books. Unearth dark tales of haunted mansions, eerie secrets, and supernatural horrors in these must-read novels.
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Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Composed as part of a challenge between Byron and Shelley to conjure up the most terrifying ghost story, 'Frankenstein' narrates the chilling tale of a being created by a bright young scientist and the catastrophic consequences that ensue.
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The Monk
by Matthew Lewis
Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt. This edition contains a new introduction which shows how Lewis played with convention, ranging from gruesome realism to social comedy, and even parodied the Gothic genre in which he was writing.
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Three Ghost Stories
by Charles Dickens
While the three ghosts that visited Ebenezer Scrooge was Charles Dickens' most famous apparitions, his interest in the supernatural did not end there. Three Ghost Stories is just that: a collection of three different stories that are true Gothic classics. The three stories, The Signal Man, The Haunted House and The Trial for Murder were sensational for their time and continue to hold up well, thanks to Charles Dickens' superb skills at storytelling. The Signal Man is the most well known of the three, chronicling the haunting of a railroad signal man who is visited by a ghost just before a tragic event is to happen on the railway. If you like Dickens and tales of spectres and the supernatural, you'll love Three Ghost Stories.
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The Mysteries of Udolpho
by Ann Radcliffe
With The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe raised the Gothic romance to a new level and inspired a long line of imitators. Portraying her heroine's inner life, creating a thick atmosphere of fear, and providing a gripping plot that continues to thrill readers today, The Mysteries of Udolpho is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her. This new edition includes an introduction that discusses the publication and early reception of the novel, the genre of Gothic romance, and Radcliffe's use of history, exotic settings, the supernatural, and poetry. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre
by John Polidori
`The Vampyre' was first published in 1819 in the London New Monthly Magazine. The present volume - a companion to Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine in World's Classics - selects thirteen other tales of the macabre first published in the leading London and Dublin magazines between 1819 and 1838. It includes Edward Bulwer's chilling account of the doppelganger, Letitia Landon's elegant reworking of the Gothic romance, William Carleton's terrifying description of an actual lynching, and James Hogg's ghoulish exploitation of the cholera epidemic of 1831-2.
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Hound of the Baskervilles
by Arthur Conan Doyle
If Doyle's good friend Fletcher Robinson had never told local legends about escaped prisoners and a family dog as they walked among prehistoric ruins and English moors, The Hound of the Baskervilles may have never been put down on paper. Doyle took this local legend and turned it into the tale of a hellhound and the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, filled with a cast of characters whose motives are questionable at best. Dr. Watson, who is left alone to do some of the detective work, sinks into the depths that are his surroundings. "The longer one stays here," he says, "the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul." The Hound of the Baskervilles revels in this unsettling surrounding; luring the reader into the quicksand of suspense where an escaped killer is at large on the moor and a murderous, ghostly hound is on the loose.