Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime and paperback fiction. At these meetings they're as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are marriage, motherhood, and neighborhood gossip.

Writer Ben Mears has returned to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot with the hope that moving into a delapidated mansion, long the subject of town lore, might help him get a handle on his life and provide inspiration for a new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods and only one comes out alive, Mears begins to realize that there may be something sinister at work.

Before H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and Anne Rice, Henry James wrote hair-raising stories that made horror a popular, sometimes controversial, widely-read literary form, and set the bar for all who followed. Stephen King considers James’ The Turn of The Screw one of the best horror novels ever penned.

Vincentio di Vivaldi has fallen in love with Ellena Rosalba. However, his proud and noble family vehemently oppose the match: they cannot allow him to wed someone with no money or social standing. Thus, his mother, the mean-spirited Marchesa, and her minion, the evil monk Father Schedoni, set in motion a malign plot that has Ellena kidnapped and imprisoned in a convent, to prevent a hasty marriage.

The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel. The son of Manfred, Prince of Otranto, is mysteriously killed on his wedding day by a huge helmet. The event leads to a fast-paced story of jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena unfolding in an atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight, and dark castle walls mirroring the inner turmoil of the characters themselves.

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water. Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting dry land only to trade for supplies and information in the few remaining outposts of civilization.

When the Imagine Network commissioned a documentary on mermaids, to be filmed from the cruise ship Atargatis, they expected what they had always received before: an assortment of eyewitness reports that proved nothing, some footage that proved even less, and the kind of ratings that only came from peddling imaginary creatures to the masses.

Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle--but nonetheless world-changing--invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence--until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life.

Published in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo would become one of the most popular works of literature of its time. In this story, the reader is taken on a wild adventure as they transverse the world of Edmond Dantes, a man that has been wrongfully imprisoned in the gloomy Château d’If. Dantes' time at the château has not been a complete waste. During his imprisonment, he hears of hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. With grim determination, Edmond Dante plans to escape and find the treasure.

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

Haelewise has always lived under the shadow of her mother, Hedda—a woman who will do anything to keep her daughter protected. For with her strange black eyes and even stranger fainting spells, Haelewise is shunned by her village, and her only solace lies in the stories her mother tells of child-stealing witches, of princes in wolf-skins, of an ancient tower cloaked in mist, where women will find shelter if they are brave enough to seek it. Then, Hedda dies, and Haelewise is left unmoored.

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery.

After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves, Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured audiences' imaginations for more than 150 years.

Tess Durbeyfield has become one of the most famous female protagonists in 19th-century British literature. Betrayed by the two men in her life - Alec D’Urberville, her seducer/rapist and father of her fated child; and Angel, her intellectual and pious husband - Tess takes justice, and her own destiny, into her delicate hands. In telling her desperate and passionate story, Hardy brings Tess to life with an extraordinary vividness that makes her live in the heart of the reader long after the novel is concluded.

Audible Originals bring you a brand new audiobook adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic gothic novella, Carmilla - starring Rose Leslie ( Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey), David Tennant ( Doctor Who and Broadchurch) and Phoebe Fox ( Life in Squares and The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death)

This was the very first vampire thriller! Pure innocence becomes the target of age-old evil. Virtuous Laura has grown up in a solitary castle and longs for a close friend. Her wish seems granted with the arrival of a beautiful and mysterious stranger named Carmilla. A friendship develops but the brooding mood and sexual overtones mar Laura's happiness. Will she escape with her life and spirit?

Carmilla is a Gothic novel by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The story is told by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later discovered to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). Laura, one of the two central characters, recounts, beginning with her childhood in a "picturesque and solitary" castle in Styria, where she lives with her father, a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire.

When the tale begins, a strange and sudden malady is claiming the lives of the local peasants in Styria. Laura, an innocent girl of eighteen, lives a lonely life there with her loving father and two governesses. Then a dramatic coach crash on Laura’s doorstep brings a mysterious, beautiful, but languorous young woman to stay with them. This is Carmilla.

Laura and her father live a quiet life in their remote castle in the dense forests Styria. It is a solitary existence for young Laura, who has no companionship except for her governess and the occasional visits of neighbouring gentry. Into this lonely life comes the mysterious house guest, Carmilla. Slowly Laura falls under Carmilla's spell. Whilst she is both attracted and repulsed by Carmilla, she seems unable to find the energy to resist her.

Carmilla, publié en 1872, est le plus célèbre roman de l'écrivain irlandais Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. L'œuvre est d'ailleurs l'un des romans gothiques et vampiriques les plus célèbres du genre tant les atmosphères y sont puissantes et mystérieuses. Laura, candide à souhait, incarne la parfaite héroïne gothique. Carmilla, quant à elle, personnage énigmatique et dangereux, incarne la sensualité et présente l'homosexualité féminine sous un jour nouveau, sombre, venimeux et exalté. Carmilla est un livre important dans la culture vampirique.

Predating Bram Stoker's "Dracula" by twenty-five years, Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" is one of the earliest examples of vampire fiction; a Gothic novella narrated by a young girl who becomes a victim of the title character, a female vampire with whom she also kindles a romance.

Carmilla, published in 1872, was one of the first vampire novels and is certainly among the most sensuous with its strong lesbian overtones. It is a classic Gothic novella set deep in the enchanted forests of Styria, a land still haunted by superstition and of course vampires. Carmilla predates fellow Irishman Bram Stoker's Dracula by 25 years, and listening to both, you will see the influence of Carmilla on Dracula.

In the late 19th century, Laura lives a lonely life in a schloss by the forest, Styria, with only her doting father and two governesses for company. A chance accident brings a new companion, however - the eccentric and beautiful Carmilla. With charm unparalleled and habits as mysterious as her history, Carmilla’s allure is undeniable, drawing Laura closer with every affectionate touch and word.

Due to an unfortunate series of events, a teenage girl named Carmilla is left in the care of a wealthy widower and his daughter, Laura. Laura, upon meeting the poor girl, comes to realize that she knows her face. Years prior when she was but a child, Laura was haunted by a presence in her room with the likeness of the young girl. Convinced it was just a nightmare, Laura and Carmilla become fast friends. But as Carmilla's stay continues, strange things begin to happen to the townspeople nearby.