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Literary Reference Center
Novels, short stories, poems, plot summaries and synopses, and literary criticism. Research guides, lesson plans, and citation tools support student learning.
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Adult - Halloween Fun
Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Eisenhower Public Library Staff Picks: Horror
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Eisenhower Public Library Staff Picks: Horror
More Lists...
Description
"The story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly place called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a chilling encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering...
2) Dracula
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In a gripping and sensational work of classic Gothic fiction we discover the infamous Count Dracula. When English lawyer Jonathan Harker travels to an obscure town called Transylvania, the goal of his visit was most certainly not to do business with a vampire. As he makes his way through the village square, Harker is overcome with an eerie sensation that the Count is not who he says he is. Strewn with various charms and trinkets thrown at him from...
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"Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya's last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside...
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Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret takes readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features an afterword by Jonathan Lethem.
5) You know her
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Description
Two hours before he vanished, Mark Dixon stole a glass of wine. That's what bartender Sophie Braam told the cops when they questioned her about the customer whose mutilated body was just found. What she didn't tell them is that she's the one who killed him. Officer Nora Martin is new to the Bellair Police Department and trying very hard to learn the ropes from Detective Murphy while ignoring all the men in the department snapping about a diversity...
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Description
"The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that Walpole pioneered. Professing to be a translation of a mysterious Italian tale from the darkest Middle Ages, the novel tells of Manfred, prince of Otranto, whose fear of an ancient prophecy sets him on a course of destruction. After the grotesque...
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Banned SF/Fantasy Books
Digital Minds: Fictional Tales of AI
Green Hills All Staff Favorites
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Digital Minds: Fictional Tales of AI
Green Hills All Staff Favorites
More Lists...
Description
"A stunning new clothbound edition of Mary Shelley's infamous work of horror fiction, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. These delectable and collectible Penguin editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature,...
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Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award One of Granta 's Best Young British Novelists From the acclaimed author of Boy, Snow, Bird There's something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it's been home to four generations of Silver women--Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their...
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Left at an orphanage as a child, Thea Reed vowed to find her mother someday. Now grown, her search takes her to turn-of-the-century Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin. When the clues she finds lead her to a mental asylum, Thea uses her experience as a postmortem photographer to gain access and assist groudskeeper Simeon Coyle in photographing the patients and uncovering the secrets within. However, she never expected her personal quest would reawaken the...
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"In this wickedly whimsical Gothic murder mystery brimming with romance, betrayals, and chills, a fake spiritualist is summoned to hold a séance for a bride who died on the eve before her wedding, but as nefarious secrets are revealed, the line between hoax and haunting blurs."--Amazon.com.
"In Victorian London, Genevieve Timmons poses as a spiritualist to swindle wealthy mourners--until one misstep lands her in a jail cell awaiting the noose. Then...
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Eisenhower Public Library Staff Picks: Literary Fiction
Horror (Adult Fiction)
OBD Happy Halloween - Adult
Horror (Adult Fiction)
OBD Happy Halloween - Adult
Description
Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, first published in 1910, remained a perennial favorite throughout the twentieth century and into the early 2000s. It was adapted to several popular motion pictures and into one of the most successful stage musicals of all time. Its main character, Erik, is a romantic figure whose appeal reaches across different cultures and times. He is a sensitive soul, an accomplished composer and musician whose great...
12) Northanger Abbey
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"A timeless classic, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is both a coming-of-age story and a parody of the Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. Catherine Morland is destined to be the heroine of her own life story as she navigates friendships and romantic relationships, and as she learns to let go of childish notions of fantasy regarding the lives of others. Held from publication for more than a decade, this story was an instant success when it was...
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Martha has many moments of foreboding as she begins her new job as governess to Alvean, daughter of widower, Con TreMellyn. Soon she hears of strange accidents, sudden deaths, and mysteries, and only her love for the little girl- and her father- makes Martha resolve to stay and unravel the mystery of Mellyn.
14) Frankenstein
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Description
"Few works by comic book artists have earned the universal acclaim and reverence that Bernie Wrightson's illustrated version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein was met with upon its original release in 1983. A generation later, this magnificent pairing of art and literature is still considered to be one of the greatest achievements made by any artist in the field. This book includes the complete text of the original groundbreaking novel,...
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The case study of Vanitas volume 6
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English
Description
"On the trail of the Beast of Gévaudan, Vanitas and Noé are led to the heart of the incident and the noble house of d'Apchier. There, they discover that a brave, heartrending wish to save a daughter from a vampire's fate became the haunting first cry of the Beast itself..."--Page [4] of cover.
16) Blood mountain
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"In this mosaic of Southwestern Gothic Horror, a primordial goddess awakens deep within the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The mountain hungers for revenge as invaders leave her emancipated with their greed and brutality. She cries out for blood, infusing the minds of those who do not belong-twisting them outwardly into the dark forms of their true intentions. An Under Sheriff struggles to grasp brittle threads of hope within the valley and mountains,...
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Description
Emily Bront's only novel, a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence, the Penguin Classics edition of Wuthering Heights is the definitive edition of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place...
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"The Beast of Gévaudan, which once plunged France into terror, has risen again in the nineteenth century. As Vanitas and the others investigate the relationship between the Beast and the vampires, they find their way barred by the paladin Astolfo and Jeanne, the Hellfire Witch. Who is it that laughs in a world blanketed white?"--
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"A book so iconic that its title is synonymous with split personalities, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was first released in 1886. The story of a virtuous Dr. Jekyll who mistakenly creates an alter ego of unadulterated evil serves as an examination of the duality of human nature and the battle between good and evil. Full of mystery and fright, this story has remained popular for more than a century...
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"The Essential Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe features key works, spanning from 1827 to his death in 1849, from the famous Gothic American writer, especially Poe's spine-chilling short stories and melodious poems. Included in this indispensable edition, with a new introduction by Daniel Stashower, are the short stories "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," as well as classic poems such as "The Raven,"...