Gothic Horror Novels if You Love Frankenstein

Since its publication in 1897 Dracula has enthralled generations of readers with the alluring malevolence of its undead Count, the most famous vampire in literature. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, his novel helped catapult them to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies that flourishes to this day. A century of imitations has done nothing to diminish the fascination of Stoker’s tale of a suave and chilling monster as he stalks his prey from a crumbling castle in Transylvania’s Carpathian mountains to an insane asylum in England to the bedrooms of his swoony female victims. A classic of Gothic horror, Dracula remains an irresistible entertainment of undying appeal.

“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous. Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl’s search for belonging.

In the lands of Bethel, the Prophet’s word is law. When a mishap lures Immanuelle into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches, their spirits bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother. When she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters — her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead … Vampires, vaqueros, and star-crossed lovers face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural Western from the author of The Hacienda.

In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.

Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times bestselling horror novel about a women’s book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town. Now in paperback!

Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods — until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiosity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp.

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night as it can cause evil spirits to appear — and even follow you home … These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. These stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

A powerful Nigeria-set horror tale of possession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets, and murder from the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and “Queen of African Horror.” For readers of Octavia Butler, Ben Okri, and Koji Suzuki.

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force — a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

No one in the grip of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the adaptations, imitations, and homages which have followed in its ample wake. In her first novel, written at the instigation of Lord Byron and published in 1818 (and revised in 1831), Mary Shelley produced English Romanticism’s finest prose fiction.