Gothic Classics

The Phantom of the Opera is Gaston Leroux's exquisite blend of Gothic horror and tragic romance that formed the basis for a world-renowned stage musical. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Mireille Ribiere and an introduction by Jann Matlock.

In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers - a note that makes question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure. A beguiling story that proves that Gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live - and even thrive - under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces listeners to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.

Cherished by a Father, coveted by a king, loved by an almost-priest; tormented by demons, tortured by a madman, hunted by a cult, hounded by her father. Mouse has survived it all. Despite Mouse's power, her father always wanted a son - and now, at long last, he has him. And Mouse has a brother, someone else in the world just like her. Hiding among a tribe of the Martu in the isolation of the Australian outback near the edges of Lake Disappointment, Mouse and Angelo have seemingly evaded at least one of the predators hunting them.

A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake. She introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.

With its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen's novels. It tells the story of young, impressionable Catherine Morland, whose first experience of fashionable society introduces her to the thrills of gothic romances, and to the sophisticated Tilneys, who invite her to their family home, Northanger Abbey. But there, influenced by novels of horror and intrigue, Catherine begins to think that terrible crimes are being committed, and her imagination threatens to run away with her.

Our story begins in 1785 when a young seafarer, Captain Thornhill, disappears while visiting the shop of a barber in London, a certain Sweeney Todd whose shop in Fleet Street is situated by St. Dunstan's church, just round the corner from the famous and popular meat pie shop run by Mrs. Lovett. Thornhill was carrying a string of pearls as a gift for Johanna Oakley, the sweetheart of his friend Mark Ingestrie who is missing, presumed lost at sea.

"Les Hauts de Hurlevent," le seul roman d'Emily Brontë, est un chef-d'œuvre intemporel de la littérature anglaise. Publié pour la première fois en 1847 sous le pseudonyme d'Ellis Bell, ce roman gothique plonge les lecteurs dans l'atmosphère sombre et tumultueuse des landes du Yorkshire.

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter Gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission.

Northanger Abbey, a satire of Gothic melodrama, is one of Jane Austen's most popular works. When Catherine Morland is launched into the politics and pitfalls of the Bath social season, she behaves with the cheerful open-mindedness of one of Jane Austen's most eligible classic heroines.

Basil Hallward había terminado el retrato. El joven Dorian, al verlo, no pudo más que desear, desde su frívola inocencia, que fuera su imagen la que envejeciera y se corrompiera con el paso de los años mientras él permanecía intacto. Y así fue: a partir de entonces, Dorian Gray conservó no solo la lozanía y la hermosura propias de la juventud, sino el aspecto puro de los inocentes. Pero ¿a qué precio? El retrato de Dorian Gray es un logro insoslayable de la literatura universal, vertido aquí magníficamente por el escritor y traductor Alejandro Palomas.

For a century Bram Stoker's Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up under the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal, and erotic creature of the night. A skilled and imaginative cast, including Brian Cox as Van Helsing and Heathcote Williams as Dracula, brings this classic horror story to life!

Here 19 classic tales from masters of the genre. The collection comprises 'Schalken the Painter' by J. S. Lefanu; 'Sredni Vashtar' by Saki (H. H. Munro); 'The Room in the Tower' by E. F. Benson; 'Charles Ashmore's Trail' by Ambrose Bierce; 'The Mark of the Beast' by Rudyard Kipling; 'The Castle of Ratcliffe Cross' by J. Wadham; 'The Bead Necklace' by Alice Perrin; 'The Oval Portrait' by Edgar Allan Poe; 'The Leather Funnel' by Arthur Conan Doyle; 'Berenice' by Edgar Allan Poe; and many more.

Hours before his wedding, fifteen-year-old Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is crushed to death. His father, Manfred, Lord of Otranto, sees only one recourse to protect the family lineage. He will divorce his wife and marry the boy’s bride-to-be. Her wishes be damned. When the fearful and resistant Isabella takes flight, Manfred follows in mad pursuit. But it is he who must outrun a greater fear: a curse cast on his family generations ago.

A gifted, idolized singer returns to his poor hometown and a life and family he is so far removed from he now holds them in contempt. The Gospel Singer reveals the absurdity of blind religious faith and idol worship and the hypocrisy that results with the offering of money or sex. Crews grapples with race, gender, religion, and place and steps back to divulge the secrets of his characters - including a dead girl awaiting the gospel singer’s melodious eulogy, his dysfunctional family, a murderer, the zealous town residents, and a traveling freak show.

E. M. Forster's first novel is a witty comedy of manners that is tinged with tragedy. It tells the story of Lilia Herriton, who proves to be an embarrassment to her late husband's family as, in the small Tuscan town of Monteriano, she begins a relationship with a much younger Italian man - classless, uncouth, and highly unsuitable. A subtle attack on Edwardian values and a humanely sympathetic portrayal of the clash of two cultures, Where Angels Fear to Tread is also a profound exploration of character and virtue.

Widely considered a classic of the gothic fiction genre, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It follows an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after murdering an old man with a "vulture eye". The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by cutting it into pieces and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's guilt manifests itself in the hallucination that the man's heart is still beating under the floorboards.

For more than 50 years, William Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career - long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts - Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.

Romantics everywhere have been enthralled by Emily Bronte's classic novel of the tragic love between beautiful, spirited Catherine Earnshaw and dark, brooding Heathcliff. The restrained desire between these two star-crossed lovers has always smoldered on the page. And now it ignites into an uncontrollable blaze. In Wuthering Nights, writer I.J. Miller reimagines this timeless story to reveal the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff - in all its forbidden glory.

Durante un viaje en Alta Mar, el capitán Walton le escriba cartas a su hermana: en ellas le cuenta sus aventuras, y sobre todo el misterioso encuentro con el doctor Víctor Frankenstein. Escrita por la inglesa Mary Shelley y publicada en 1818, la tenebrosa historia del científico que juega a ser Dios, singnificó un antes y un después en la llamada tradición gótica. La famosa novela explora temas como la moral, la creación y la destrucción de la vida, considerándose el primer texto del género de ciencia ficción.

Pubblicato nel 1886, Lo strano caso del Dr. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde, è considerato una pietra miliare della letteratura di tutti i tempi. Il capolavoro di Stevenson analizza l'eterna lotta tra il bene ed il male con una potenza drammatica che lo ha reso un’opera di portata universale. Il tema del “doppio” emerge prepotentemente dagli esperimenti del dott. Jekyll, il quale esplorando il lato oscuro di ogni essere umano, incontra il suo spaventoso alter ego: Mr. Hyde.