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The Haunting of Drumroe

The Haunting of DrumroeClaudette Nicolle | Fawcett Gold Medal | 141 pages | 1971 Eileen Donegan returns to Ireland and her ancestral family home after receiving a cryptic letter of help from her aunt Agnes, Lady Donegon of Drumroe. Driving to the remote estate, Eileen is nearly killed by a tree falling across the road, sending her rental car plunging into a lake. Finally arriving at the great…

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The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the OperaGaston Leroux | Warner Books | 1986 (first published 1909) | 264 pages With Andrew Lloyd Webber’s pop-cultural juggernaut retiring from Broadway, now is perhaps a good time to return to the Paris Opera House and reevaluate Gaston Leroux’s original The Phantom of the Opera. The book unfolds almost as a true-crime account, with the unnamed narrator reflecting back from…

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The Mystery of the Yellow Room

The Mystery of the Yellow RoomGaston Leroux | Dover | 1977 (first published 1907) | 188 pages The Mystery of the Yellow Room, an early example of a “locked-door” mystery by the author of The Phantom of the Opera, introduces the young reporter and amateur detective, Joseph Rouletabille, whose ingenious acts of deduction are featured in a series of novels and short stories. Rouletabille arrives…

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The King in Yellow

The King in YellowRobert W. Chambers | Dover | 1970 (first published 1895) | 287 pages The first four stories in The King in Yellow are classics of weird horror fiction, tied together by references to a fictional forbidden text that reputedly drives its readers insane. The remaining works vary in content and tone, from the horrors of war to the lives of art students in Bohemian Paris, and are…

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The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow WallpaperCharlotte Perkins Gilman | Feminist Press | 1973 (first published 1892) | 64 pages The Yellow Wallpaper packs a considerable amount of subtext into its short page count, but also creates an exceptionally creepy atmosphere of loneliness, despair and madness. It also manages to realize these accomplishments with a story essentially reduced to a single narrator in a single, if…

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The Uninhabited House

The Uninhabited HouseMrs. J.H. (Charlotte) Riddell | Chatto & Windus | 1889 | 168 pages Miss Blake has a problem. River Hall, the rambling house on the Thames her young niece, Helena Elmsdale, inherited from her father after his suicide, cannot seem to keep any paying tenants, leaving the pair in a perpetual state of financial jeopardy. The law firm managing the property discovers that the house…

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The House on the Brink

The House on the BrinkJohn Gordon | Puffin Books | 1972 | 192 pages Two teenagers investigate a supernatural mystery after something malevolent seemingly pulls itself free of the mud of the marshy Fenlands in East Anglia. Written primarily for a teen audience, the book does suggest a hypothetical Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mashup–in which Frank and Nancy also develop a budding romance–-that could…

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The Listening House

The Listening HouseMabel Seeley | Doubleday | 1938 | 296 pages “You let me see you talking, just talking, to that guy, and I’ll take your pants down and spank you with a table leg.” After losing her copywriting job because of a major proofreading error, Gwynne Dacres moves into a slightly down-at-heel boarding house to stretch her modest savings. Although described as “respectable” by the…

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Elric of Melniboné

Elric of MelnibonéMichael Moorcock | DAW | 1976 | 160 pages Elric may be the nominal emperor of the dying kingdom of Melniboné, but with his slight build, long white hair, and gloomy disposition fueled by life-sustaining drugs, his role as a proto-Goth kid is cemented as much as that of Eternal Champion. “It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his…

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Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Night Has a Thousand EyesCornell Woolrich | Ballantine | 1983 (first published 1945) | 304 pages A dark prophecy of death sends a man and his daughter into a downward spiral of despair in this supernaturally-tinged noir from the famed author of Rear Window. While strolling along the riverside late one night, off-duty detective Tom Shawn comes across a distraught young woman standing upon the…

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The Far Cry

The Far CryFrederic Brown | Black Lizard | 1987 (first published 1951) | 176 pages Seeking solitude to recuperate from an alcohol-fueled mental breakdown, George Weaver rents an isolated cabin in Taos, New Mexico, for a summer of psychological rest before returning to work and family in Kansas City. His rental, the last shack on a lonely, dead-end road into the mountains, was the site of a…

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The Dain Curse

The Dain CurseDashiell Hammett | Vintage Books | 1978 (first published 1929) | 213 pages The unnamed operative from San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency returns in The Dain Curse, a novel–like its predecessor, Red Harvest–originally serialized in the pulp crime magazine, Black Mask. A diamond theft from the home of scientist Edgar Leggett triggers a series of connected cases revolving…

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Red Harvest

Red HarvestDashiell Hammett | Vintage | 1972 (first published 1929) | 199 pages “This damned burg’s getting me. If I don’t get away soon I’ll be going blood-simple like the natives.” An unnamed operative from the Continental Detective Agency arrives in the small mining town of Personville (derisively nicknamed “Poisonville” by its residents), only to find that his prospective client has been…

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The Black Abbot

The Black AbbotEdgar Wallace | Hodder & Stoughton | 1959 (first published 1926) | 192 pages Harry Alford, 18th Earl of Chelford, is obsessed with the legend of a buried treasure hidden somewhere on the grounds of Fossaway Manor. His search for the cache of gold bars–not to mention a bottle containing a magical elixir granting immortal life–is thwarted by his fear of the Black Abbot. This ghostly…

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Jirel of Joiry

Jirel of JoiryC.L. Moore | Paperback Library | 1969 (first published 1934) | 175 pages Originally published in Weird Tales magazine in the thirties, this collection of sword-and-sorcery tales features a red-haired female equivalent to Conan the Barbarian, but also forgoes much action to lean heavily into the weird. In Black God’s Kiss, Jirel’s domain is conquered by the malicious–but somehow…

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The Three Imposters

The Three ImpostersArthur Machen | Ballantine | 1972 (first published 1895) | 194 pages A chance encounter on the streets of London plunges Mr. Dyson and his associate into a netherworld of intrigue revolving around the titular trio and their pursuit of an infamous Roman coin. Dyson, a self-proclaimed man of letters, along with Mr. Phillips, his friend who leans more toward the scientific than…

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In a Glass Darkly

In a Glass Darkly

In a Glass DarklyJ. Sheridan Le Fanu | Wordsworth | 2007 (first published 1872) | 272 pages Considered a classic of gothic horror, In a Glass Darkly is a collection of short stories told through the papers of Dr. Hesselius, an occult detective, compiled by an assistant many years after his death. Yet, Hesselius himself plays little part beyond documenting the cases, which are mostly dull affairs…