# Gothic Fiction: Dread, Darkness & the Supernatural From Mary Shelley's laboratory to Shirley Jackson's haunted house, gothic fiction explores the fears lurking beneath civilized life. Two free public-domain classics and four modern picks that define the genre. Source: https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/lists/gothic-fiction/ --- ## Dracula — Free Author: Bram Stoker Read online (free, public domain): https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/dracula/ How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no stateme... ## Frankenstein — Free Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Read online (free, public domain): https://www.cyberlibrary.org/en/books/frankenstein/ You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my... ## Rebecca — Kindle Author: Daphne du Maurier (1938) Buy on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074ALZ7Q?tag=cyberlibrar00-20 The unnamed heroine is haunted by the ghost of her husband's first wife in this gothic masterpiece. ## The Haunting of Hill House — Kindle Author: Shirley Jackson (1959) Buy on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D83LBPJ8?tag=cyberlibrar00-20 Four strangers spend a summer in Hill House — and not all of them leave with their sanity intact. ## We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Kindle Author: Shirley Jackson (1962) Buy on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRV98N31?tag=cyberlibrar00-20 Merricat Blackwood guards her eccentric family's estate against a world that fears and resents them. ## Mexican Gothic — Kindle Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) Buy on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YK1K1YK?tag=cyberlibrar00-20 1950s Mexico: socialite Noemí Taboada investigates a crumbling mansion with a sinister past.