Zastrozzi

Author	Charlotte Dacre
ISBN	1551111462

'Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.' This is the final judgement of Satan on Victoria di Loredani, the heroine of Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century. The novel follows Victoria's progress...

Author	J. Sheridan Le Fanu
ISBN	0750906871

The Wyvern Mystery combines all the elements of nail-biting horror, romantic fairy tale, psychological thriller and rich period drama to create a compelling story. When young Alice Maybell is orphaned she is taken in by Squire Fairfield, a widower with two dashing sons, Charles and Harry. As Alice...

Author	Sydney Owenson Morgan
ISBN	0192832832

"I long to study the purely national, purely natural character of an Irishwoman." When Horatio, the son of an English lord, is banished to his father's Irish estate as punishment for his dissipated ways, he goes off in search of adventure. On the wild west coast of Connaught he finds remnants of a romantic...

Author	Sarah Scott
ISBN	1551110156

This is an interesting novel published in 1762. It isn’t easy to read because it has that irritating eighteenth century habit of needing to be didactic and morally improving. It was written by Sarah Scott and describes a female run and populated community run on what might be described as utopian lines....

Author	Lord Byron
ISBN	1103516817

Manfred contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Romantic closet drama. Manfred was adapted musically by Robert Schumann in 1852, in a composition entitled Manfred: Dramatic Poem with music in Three Parts,...

Author	Richard Holmes
ISBN	1590170377

Shelley: The Pursuit is the book with which Richard Holmes—the finest literary biographer of our day—made his name. Dispensing with the long-established Victorian picture of Shelley as a blandly ethereal character, Holmes projects a startling image of "a darker and more earthly, crueler and...

Author	Thomas Love Peacock
ISBN	0140430458

Thomas Love Peacock is literature's perfect individualist.

He has points in common with Aristophanes, Plato, Rabelais, Voltaire, and even Aldous Huxley, but resembles none of them; we can talk of the satirical novel of ideas, but his satire is too cheery and good-natured, his novel too rambling,...

Author	Karl Friedrich Kahlert
ISBN	0979233224

"The hurricane was howling, the hailstones beating against windows, the hoarse croaking of the raven bidding adieu to autumn, and the weather-cock's dismal creaking joined with the mournful dirge of the solitary owl..." "The Necromancer" consists of a series of interconnected stories, all centering...

Author	Francis Lathom
ISBN	1934555126

Young Alphonsus Cohenburg enters his mother's bedroom and finds her covered in blood. She tells him his uncle has murdered his father, and orders him to flee Cohenburg castle forever to save his own life!

A disconsolate exile, Alphonsus wanders the earth seeking the means of survival, first...

Author	Florence Marryat
ISBN	1934555657

Miss Harriet Brandt, daughter of a mad scientist and a voodoo priestess, comes of age and leaves her home in Jamaica for the first time, travelling to Europe. Beautiful and talented, Harriet will gain the affections of many of the men and women she meets and a bright future seems assured for her.

But...

Author	Marie Corelli
ISBN	1406515442

Mary Mackay was a British novelist who began her career as a musician, adopting the name Marie Corelli for her billing. She gave up music, turning to writing instead and in 1886 published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds. In her time, she was the most widely read author of fiction but came under harsh...

Author	Caroline Lamb
ISBN	0460874683

this book is terrible. but it gets an extra star for its ballsiness.

you would think that something written by one of history's most jaw-droppingly melodramatic scorned lovers would at least have a little heart to it, yeah? but this is just a muddled, "self"-aggrandizing (because it's a novel,...

Author	Eleanor Sleath
ISBN	1409948099

Eleanor Sleath was a British author wellknown for her 1798 novel The Orphan of the Rhine. The novel, subtitled A Romance, was published in four volumes. It was listed as one of the seven "horrid novels" by Jane Austen in her novel Northanger Abbey. It was part of a brief but popular vogue of German tales,...

Author	Eliza Parsons
ISBN	0977784169

Matilda Weimar flees her lecherous and incestuous uncle and seeks refuge in the ancient Castle of Wolfenbach. Among the castle's abandoned chambers, Matilda will discover the horrifying mystery of the missing Countess of Wolfenbach. But when her uncle tracks her down, can she escape his despicable...

Author	Regina Maria Roche
ISBN	0976604841

This review cannot come at a more perfect time because not only did I finish a brillisnt classic but I am writing a review for it on my spankin' new laptop. Clermont was one of the mos beautiful books I haveever read. The emotions, the character, the plot development was all carried out in such an honest,...

Author

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the author of Sherlock Holmes, brings us the mysterious Raffles Haw. Robert McIntyre and his sister Laura have fallen on hard times. Their father has been driven into bankruptcy and near madness and alcoholism by commercial reverses and the death of his wife. The family...

Author	Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué
ISBN	1934555983

It is the twelfth century, the era of Richard the Lion-heart and the Third Crusade. Along the Danube, the tranquil world shared by the young squire Otto and his cousin Bertha is changed forever when they witness a knightly contest for possession of a magic ring. Soon both are drawn into a quest that transforms...

Author	Claire de Duras
ISBN	0873527801

Based on a true story, Ourika relates the experiences of a Senegalese girl who is rescued from slavery and raised by an aristocratic French family during the French Revolution. Brought up in a household of learning and privilege, she is unaware of her difference until she overhears a conversation that...

Author	Wilkie Collins
ISBN	1409913503

William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and writer of short stories. He was hugely popular in his time, and wrote 27 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and over 100 pieces of non-fiction work. His best-known works are The Woman in White (1860), The...

Author	Alexandre Dumas
ISBN	0531151026

The year is 1841. Count Elim, out with a hunting party, becomes lost in Germany's Taunus Mountains. Seeking refuge in the deteriorating Castle Eppstein, he convinces the caretakers to let him spend the night in the haunted Red Room, where his sleep will be disturbed by the wandering spectre of the Countess...

Author	Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
ISBN	0192832891

Valperga (1823), the novel Mary Shelley wrote after Frankenstein, is based on the life of Castruccio Castracani (1281-1328), Prince of Lucca. A brilliant soldier and cruel tyrant, he successfully commanded Ghibelline forces in Tuscany against the Guelphs. Woven into the story of this factional...