This is the classic, hypnotic story of the undead creatures of the night--and the human lives they touch--as they relentlessly seek to satiate an accursed craving for their only sustenance: human blood. A Gothic novel of immense proportions, "Dracula" has only strengthened its grip on the public over the course of the last century.

This dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its young author had just achieved his freedom. Douglass' eloquence gives a clear indication of the powerful principles that led him to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. The personal account of a fugitive slave's privation and sufferings and his campaigns for Negro emancipation. This dramatic autobiography of the...

Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the apalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then...

From the Publisher: Frankenstein: Using parts from corpses, Victor Frankenstein creates a large, man-like creature. Rejected and abused by humans, the creature takes revenge by committing murder. Frankenstein then pursues the creature, determined to kill him or die in the attempt. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: When Dr. Henry Jekyll begins to look ill and isolates himself from his friends, they fear for his life. A mysterious, evil man...

Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, first published in 1910, remained a perennial favorite throughout the twentieth century and into the early 2000s. It was adapted to several popular motion pictures and into one of the most successful stage musicals of all time. Its main character, Erik, is a romantic figure whose appeal reaches across different cultures and times. He is a sensitive soul, an accomplished composer and musician whose great...

First published in 1899, this revolutionary novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of woman's emancipation. Rooted in the romantic tradition of Melville and Dickinson, it is the story of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier, a surprisingly modern woman trapped in a dehumanizing marriage and in search of self-discovery. Turning

...

A man awakens to find himself transformed into a giant vermin; a performer starves himself to death as a circus attraction; a fiendish engine of capital punishment engraves the letter of the law into the body of the condemned. Such are the nightmare scenarios that emerge in the short stories of Franz Kafka, one of the twentieth century's most formative, mystifying literary figures. Though immediate in their impact, Kafka's stories invite endless angles...

In "Heart of Darkness, Captain Marlowe must wend his way up the African Congo to recover the missing Colonel Kurtz in one of the greatest steamship adventures ever told. As Marlowe's ship Nellie scrapes along the Congo, the voyage into the human soul, like the morass of steaming foliage along the banks, becomes increasingly dark and perilous. In addition to the Marlowe tales "Heart of Darkness and "Youth, this new volume includes Conrad's classic...