The Haunting of Drumroe Claudette 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 house, she is alarmed to discover that her aunt has gone missing, and that none of the household staff can explain her absence.  A familiar gothic thriller template is further established with the ..read more

The Mystery of the Yellow Room Gaston 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 at the Château du Glandier to investigate an attack against Mathilde Stangerson, the daughter and scientific associate of a notable professor who conducts his work in a laboratory housed in a pavilion o ..read more

The King in Yellow Robert 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 arguably less essential. However, like the pasted wall covering in Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, the pigment itself rubs off, tainting the various other stories with occasional referen ..read more

The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte 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 certainly remarkable, room. Failing to convince her physician husband that she is suffering from an actual illness, the narrator is left on her own to “rest” and recover from her perceived hysteria in ..read more

The Uninhabited House Mrs. 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 has a local reputation for being haunted, driving away any prospective tenants, buyers, and even household staff.  Harry Patterson, a clerk at the Craven law firm, takes it upon himself to m ..read more

The House on the Brink John 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 easily have been titled The Case of the Evil Log. Leaving a night class held in the isolated home of a lonely widow, Mrs. Knowles, teen Dick Dodds stumbles across a strange trail in the mud of the marsh ..read more

The Listening House Mabel 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 house’s landlady, Harriet Garr, 593 Trent Street is perched on a steep incline overlooking a seedy neighborhood, and produces a somewhat disquieting effect upon Gwynne. Her anxiety proves justified, however ..read more

Elric of Melniboné Michael 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 shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the colour of bone.” E ..read more