Every night at the Palais Garnier, hundreds of guests wait for opera star La Carlotta to take the stage. But when her voice fails her, La Carlotta is replaced with unknown understudy Christine Daaé, a young soprano whose vibrant singing fills the opera house and wins her numerous admirers, including an old childhood friend who soon professes his love. But unknown to Christine is another man, who lurks out of sight, who can move about the building undetected, who will do anything to make sure Christine will keep singing just for him… (Originally published 1909–1910.)

Robert Holt is an out-of-work clerk seeking shelter in an abandoned house. He comes face-to-face with a fantastical creature with supernatural and hypnotic powers, a creature who can transform at will between its human and beetle forms and who wrecks havoc when he preys on young middle-class Britons. Discover the creature that is “Born of neither god nor man,” in this Gothic horror tale of revenge that takes the reader on a dark journey, one that explores the crisis of late imperial England through a fantastical and horrific lens. (Originally published 1897.)

Considered a masterpiece of bizarre invention and sustained fantasy, Vathek was written in French in 1782 and translated into English under the anonymous claim of having been translated from an Arabic original text. Vathek combines Gothic stylings with elemnts of Orientalism. The caliph Vathek is a blasphemous voluptuary who constructs a tower so tall that from it he can survey all the kingdoms of the world. Vathek impiously defies Muhammad in the seventh heaven, thus condemning himself to eternal damnation and expulsion to the netherworld. (Originally published 1786.)

On a fishing holiday to the remote Irish village of Kraighten, two friends stumble upon the ruins of a strangely shaped house on a large lake. They discover the moldering journal of the “Recluse,” an unidentified man who recorded his last days in the house before its destruction. So begins a hallucinatory account of a man’s experiences of supernatural creatures and otherworldly dimensions... (Originally published 1908.)

An uncanny tale of identity, race, and spirituality by groundbreaking Black author Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood follows the adventures of Reuel Briggs, a mixed-race American as he travels to Ethiopia from America searching for treasure and, ultimately, his heritage. First serialized in Colored American Magazine, this narrative exemplifies Pauline Hopkins’s incisive writing and interrogates issues of race and history that remain contemporary today. (Originally published 1902–1903.)

Even before he created Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle terrified and delighted readers with tales of mysterious forces that defy rational explanation. These stories capture the unique draw of the uncanny and the curiosity that compels us all to ask, “Could it be true?” Included within are nine spine-tingling tales, such as: mournful cries in an ice-bound sea; a potion that allows the user to commune with ghosts; an Egyptian priest who cannot die; and a mesmerist of unrivaled power. Brace yourself for these and other chilling encounters! (Stories originally published between 1879–1921.)

Identified as a classic in the field of supernatural fiction (both horror and Victorian Gothic), The King in Yellow is a collection of ten stories with running motifs throughout, most notably the first four, which each reference the same-named play, a forbidden work that “induces despair or madness in those who read it.” First published in 1895, this book has since continued to inspire a canon of supernatural, cosmic fiction (most famously by H.P. Lovecraft who linked much of his Cthulhu Mythos work to these tales). (Originally published 1895.)

A collection of eight of the earliest short stories of M.R. James, these eerie tales of apparitions and other supernatural horrors are now considered classics widely heralded as influential upon later authors of the strange, as well as being a turning point in the “ghost story genre.” Of recognizable note are the stories “The Ash-tree,” “The Mezzotint,” “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book,” and “'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad,” each which thrill with wit, suspense, and literary valor. (Originally published 1904.)

An omnibus of two classics of Gothic Fiction—The Castle of Otranto, named as "The first Gothic novel," in which an evil lord seeks to avert an ancient foretelling by marrying his dead son’s fiancée in order to attempt birthing another male heir; and paired with The Old English Baron, written as a reaction to Otranto from a female author's point of view, in which a peasant boy, living in a royal family’s castle, begins to show his superiority, much to the enmity of those in “higher stations.” (Originally published 1764 and 1778, respectively.)

In recounting Cheops’ attempts to put the futuristic society to rights, author Jane Webb offers a fascinating portrait of the preoccupations of her own era as well as some remarkably prescient predictions of technological advances. The Mummy! envisions a world in which automatons perform surgery, undersea tunnels connect England and Ireland, weather-control devices provide crop irrigation, and messages are transmitted with the speed of cannonball fire. The first novel to feature the concept of a living mummy, this pioneering tale offers an engaging mix of comedy, politics, and science fiction. (Originally published 1827.)