By Bernie McGill

A proud, uncompromising woman, Harriet's great passion is collecting butterflies and pinning them under glass; motherhood comes no easier to her than her role as mistress of her remote Irish estate. When her daughter dies, her community is quick to judgeher, and Harriet will not stoop to defend herself. But her journals reveal a more complex truth.

By Charles Lambert

The disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins, Morgan Fletcher—along with his housekeeper, Engel—opens up his home to two strange children whose disturbing behavior escalates as they discover the truth of his past in the attic of his mansion.

By Katy Hays
Recommended By Jenn Jordan, Library Aide

Assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden, curatorial associate Ann Stilwell becomes obsessed with the history of fortune-telling after discovering a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future, blurring the line between the modern and the arcane.

By Christian Moerk
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

“A modern gothic novel of suspense that reveals, through their diaries, the story of sisters who fall in love with a beguiling stranger and of the town that turns a blind eye to his murderous ways (From the Publisher).”

By Kate Morton

A long-lost letter arriving at its destination fifty years after it was sent lures Edie Burchill to crumbling Milderhurst Castle, home of the three elderly Blythe sisters, where Edie's mother was sent to stay as a teenager during World War II.

By Bram Stoker

Having discovered the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire.

By V. C. Andrews
Series Dollanganger Family Series

Chris, Cathy, and the twins are to be kept hidden until their grandfather dies so that their mother will receive a sizeable inheritance, however, years pass and terrifying things occur as the four children grow up in their one room prison.

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, September 25, 2018. 1:30 PM.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. Includes illustrated notes throughout the text explaining the historical background of the story. 

By Shirley Jackson

This is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a haunting; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena, but Hill House is gathering its powers and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

By Elizabeth Kostova

Discovering a medieval book and a cache of letters, a motherless American girl becomes the latest in a series of historians, who investigate the possible surviving legacy of Vlad the Impaler.

By Anne Rice
Series Vampire Chronicles

Confessions from a vampire of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead.

By Charlotte Bronte
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, September 27, 2011.  1 PM & 7:30 PM.

“In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester (From the Publisher).”

Became the movie: Jane Eyre.

By Wiley Cash

“Growing up in a small North Carolina town, Jess Hall is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he is not supposed to see, which has catastrophic repercussions (From the Publisher).”

By Deborah Lawrenson
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“Embarking on an affair with Dom, a wealthy older man she barely knows, and beginning a new life with him in Provence, Eve becomes obsessed with finding out why Dom refuses to talk about his previous marriage--and what happened to his beautiful ex-wife (From the Publisher).”

By Sarah Waters
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

“Waters reflects on the collapse of the British class system after WWII in a stunning haunted house tale … (Publishers Weekly).”

By Ransom Riggs
Series Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist

After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage.

By Jane Austen
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services

Jane Austen's first novel, Northanger Abbey - published posthumously in 1818 - tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion.

By Oscar Wilde
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Thursday, September 13.  1:30 PM.

A handsome, dissolute man sells his soul for eternal youth.

Became the movie: The Picture of Dorian Gray.

By Daphne Du Maurier
Recommended By Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference

A classic novel of romantic suspense finds the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter entering the home of her mysterious and enigmatic new husband and learning the story of the house's first mistress, to whom the sinister housekeeper is unnaturally devoted.

By Carlos Ruiz Zafón

An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart–piercing romance, and a moving homage to the mystical power fo books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.

By Stephen King

Jack Torrance sees his stint as winter caretaker of a Colorado hotel as a way back from failure, his wife sees it as a chance to preserve their family, and their five-year-old son sees the evil waiting just for them.

By Elly Griffiths
Recommended By Sue Ann R., Head of Children's Services, Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

When her colleague and close friend is murdered, high-school English teacher Clare chronicles her suspicions about the case in her diary until one day she discovers a sinister message in it and fears that a dark story has come to terrifying life.

By Edgar Cantero

Inheriting an eerie estate in the Virginia woods, a skeptical man wonders about his family member’s suicide and realizes that the house harbors both ghosts and terrible secrets, in a story told through journal entries, scrawled notes, and security footage.

By Henry James
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, October 14, 2014. 7:30 PM.

A governess tries to protect the two young children in her care from the ghosts she believes are haunting them.

Became the movie: The Others.

By Christopher Rice

The dark history of Spring House, a beautifully restored plantation mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans, has long been forgotten. But something sinister lurks beneath the soil of the old estate.

By Shirley Jackson

Details confessions of Miss Merricat Blackwood, a cunning adolescent who has gone to quite unusual lengths to preserve her ideal of family happiness.

By Elizabeth Blackwell
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Reflecting on her long-ago service with a princess who fell under a sleeping curse, Elise remembers witnessing how events actually transpired and were connected to a secretive labyrinth of evil.

By Lisa Gabriele
Recommended By Jessikah Chautin, Community Engagement Specialist

Moving into the opulent estate of her new fiancé, Max Winter, after a whirlwind romance, a young woman navigates the ire of his manipulative teen daughter and her future husband's cutthroat political ambitions.

By Wilkie Collins

The catalyst for the mystery is Walter Hartright's encounter on a moonlit road with a mysterious woman dressed head to toe in white. She is in a state of confusion and distress, and when Hartright helps her find her way back to London she warns him against an unnamed "man of rank and title." Hartright soon learns that she may have escaped from an asylum and finds to his amazement that her story may be connected to that of the woman he secretly loves.