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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”
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The House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Greedy Colonel Pyncheon builds his mansion on ill-gotten ground, setting the stage for generations of suffering. Years later, a country cousin and young boarder attempt to reverse the tide of misfortunes surrounding the house.
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The King in Yellow
by Robert W. Chambers
There is a play... a play that some say does not exists, a play that brings madness and dispair to all who read it, the play of the King in Yellow...
These tales interwoven loosely by the elements of the play: the sign, prose and poetry, and of course the mysterious figure of the king himself, the King in Yellow.A collection of strange, macabre short stories, originally published in 1895, are linked together by mention of a fictional, forbidden play which reveals truths so terrible it makes all those who read it go mad.
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The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
In a career that spanned slightly more than two decades, Edgar Allan Poe pioneered the short story as a literary form, perfected the tale of psychological horror, launched the detective fiction genre, and helped to revolutionize modern poetics. The full body of Poe's imaginative work encompasses mystery tales, horror stories, satires, fables, fantasies, science fiction, dramas, and verse.
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Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was only eighteen. At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge against his creator, Frankenstein.
Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.
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The Invisible Man
by H. G. Wells
This masterpiece of science fiction is the fascinating story of Griffin, a scientist who creates a serum to render himself invisible, and his descent into madness that follows.
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The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil.
Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls...
But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil.
For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.
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Dracula
by Bram Stoker
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘Master’. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing deeply into questions of human identity and sanity, and illuminating dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.
Watch the trailer for the film here.
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with 'damnable young man' Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil. The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic tradition: "Olalla', a tale of vampirism and tainted family blood, and 'The Body Snatcher', a gruesome fictionalisation of the exploits of the notorious Burke and Hare.
This edition contains a critical introduction by Robert Mighall, which discusses class, criminality and the significance of the story's London setting. It also includes an essay on the scientific contexts of the novel and the development of the idea of the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality.
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574-259-5277, 209 Lincoln Way east, Mishawaka, IN 46544.
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