Classics for a dark October night
A count in Transylvania, a portrait that ages, a hound on Dartmoor and a figure beneath the Paris Opera, with two short stories for the end of the evening.
October nights are long, and some of the best books for them are more than a century old. Every book here first appeared between 1839 and 1910, and every one is free to read on BDeBooks, online or as a download.
They are not all ghost stories. One is a detective novel, one is a tale about vanity, and one is the short account of a woman shut in a room. What they share is a slow, rising unease rather than sudden shocks.
If you have only one evening, start with The Fall of the House of Usher or The Yellow Wallpaper: both are short enough to finish before midnight. Dracula is the longest, and the one most likely to keep you up.
The books
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Dracula
Bram Stoker- English
- First published 1897
- Read online
- EPUB
- Audio
- Public domain
Published in May 1897. The story is told through letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings, beginning with Jonathan Harker’s journey to a castle in Transylvania.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde- English
- First published 1890
- Read online
- EPUB
- Audio
- Public domain
First printed in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in July 1890 and expanded into a book the next year. A young man stays handsome while his painted portrait grows old in his place.
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The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle- English
- First published 1902
- Read online
- EPUB
- Audio
- Public domain
Serialised in The Strand Magazine from 1901 and published as a book in 1902. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson look into the legend of a giant hound on Dartmoor.
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The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux- English
- First published 1910
- Read online
- EPUB
- Audio
- Public domain
Gaston Leroux wrote it in French, and it first ran as a newspaper serial in Paris in 1909 and 1910. A masked figure haunts the cellars of the Paris Opera house.
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The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe- English
- First published 1839
- Read online
- EPUB
- Public domain
Edgar Allan Poe’s story first appeared in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in September 1839. A visitor arrives at the decaying house of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher.
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The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman- English
- First published 1892
- Read online
- EPUB
- Public domain
Published in The New England Magazine in January 1892. A woman told to rest in a rented room grows fixed on the pattern of its wallpaper.
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