Dracula
1897 · 512 pages
An English solicitor rides into the Carpathians to close a property deal and finds his client is a corpse with plans for London. Every undead figure since works from Stoker's Count.
★ 7.0
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Turn of the Screw
1898 · 134 pages
A governess at a country house becomes certain that two dead servants are working on the children in her care. James engineered the ambiguity so precisely that critics have argued for a century.
★ 7.0
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
And Other Tales of Terror
1886 · 224 pages
Stevenson handed psychology its permanent image of the divided self. A respectable London doctor admits a brutal little stranger to his house, and the lawyer who investigates finds the truth worse than blackmail.
★ 6.9
The Bloody Chamber
1979 · 176 pages
Carter opened the old fairy tales and took out what was always inside: appetite, blood, and women who want things. Her Bluebeard is a French Marquis, and her Beauty walks toward the tiger.
★ 5.8
The Call of Cthulhu
1928 · 420 pages
Lovecraft pitched horror at cosmic scale, where the terror is an indifferent universe rather than any monster. A sculptor's dreams and a Louisiana swamp cult lead to a sunken city.
★ 5.1
The Haunting of Hill House
1959 · 288 pages
Nothing in horror is more frightening, and Jackson never shows you the thing doing it. Eleanor, who nursed her mother for years, joins a study at Hill House, and the house wants her.
★ 5.1
At the Mountains of Madness
1936 · 192 pages
Antarctic explorers find a stone city older than mankind, its history painted on the walls. Lovecraft's real monster is deep time, and this novella is where his cosmic dread reaches full scale.
★ 5.0