Gothic

A young scientist creates life from dead matter, then recoils from the creature he has made. Shelley's novel — written when she was eighteen — invented science fiction and remains a warning about the cost of unchecked ambition.

A Transylvanian count travels to England to spread his curse, pursued by a band of determined but outmatched mortals. Stoker assembled his tale from journals, letters, and newspaper cuttings, giving modern horror its founding myth.

Poe's collected stories — from the premature burial to the tell-tale heart — map the furthest reaches of dread and obsession. No writer before or since has made terror so exquisitely precise.

A lonely young woman becomes the object of a charming female guest's increasingly possessive affection. Le Fanu's vampire novella predated Dracula by twenty-six years and remains more subtle, more unsettling, and more modern.

A respected London doctor discovers a formula that separates his good and evil natures — and finds that the evil half is stronger. Stevenson wrote it in three fevered days; the world has never stopped reading it.