Classic horror

Novels that not only define horror but also explore deep psychological and existential themes, making them timeless reads that have left a lasting impact on the genre.

Updated October 21, 2024
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The castle of Otranto
Walpole, Horace
Paper Book
Purporting to be based on a (fictitious) sixteenth-century manuscript containing a mediaeval story about spooky goings - on in an Italian castle, this story opens with the death of the heir of the castle of Otrantro, on both his wedding-day and his birthday, crushed by an immense helmet.
Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
  No-one in the grip of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the adaptations, imitations and outright...
Carmilla
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
Paper Book
Predating Bram Stoker' Dracula, Carmilla is the ultimate gothic vampire tale--stylish, menacing, sensual, and spellbinding You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever. When a mysterious carriage crashes outside their castle home in Styria,...
The strange case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paper Book
An eerily superb story of murder and monstrosity on the streets of Victorian London that has remained in the public imagination for well over a century, spawning numerous adaptations, now available in an accessible format for all readers. Stevenson's classic story of split...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar 1854-1900
Paper Book
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman inthe eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears...
Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, and in fact based his character's life-in-death on extensive research in...
The phantom of the opera
Leroux, Gaston
Paper Book
A half-crazed, disfigured musician living in the labyrinthine cellars of the Paris Opera House creates a series of strange and mysterious events to further the career of a beautiful young singer. Leroux's tale of the "phantom" is widely regarded as one of the most famous of all horror stories,...
The haunting of Hill House
Jackson, Shirley 1916-1965
Paper Book
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House- Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a 'haunting...

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