Each year, our social media feeds are filled with news of the latest books in horror, true crime, and paranormal.
So many chilling new books come out each year—and our TBRs are often stacked with delectable spooky books by the latest emerging authors. We truly are in a golden age of horror fiction.
But sometimes we're in the mood for something older—books that have stood the test of time.
These are the classics that are the most disturbing. They’re strange and unnerving in uncanny ways—often calling us back to something old and ancient and unsettling.
Every month, we’re bringing you a selection of free ebooks to read that are perfect for lovers of all things spooky, mysterious, gruesome, strange, and macabre.
Dracula
The vampire novel that defined a genre by tapping into our deepest fears and darkest fantasies.
A junior solicitor travels to Transylvania to meet with an important client, the mysterious Count Dracula. Ignoring the dire warnings of local townsfolk, he allows himself to be seduced by the count’s courtly manners and erudite charm.
Too late, the solicitor realizes that he is a prisoner of Castle Dracula, his guards a trio of voluptuous young women with sharp white teeth and a taste for blood.
Soon thereafter, the solicitor’s fiancée, Mina, visits a friend on the English coast. The town is full of speculation over a Russian ship run aground nearby, its crew missing, the dead body of its captain, crucifix in hand, lashed to the wheel. A giant dog was seen leaping from the deck before disappearing into the countryside.
The ship’s cargo: fifty boxes of Transylvanian dirt. As the beautiful Mina will soon learn, Count Dracula has arrived.
At once a Gothic reflection of the Victorian era and a timeless tale of sinister lust, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has inspired countless adaptations—none with the same power to quicken the pulse as the original. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Randalls Round
The legendary collection of supernatural stories, long revered for their pioneering influence on the genres of weird fiction and folk horror.
First published in 1929, Eleanor Scott’s Randalls Round developed a cult following of horror and ghost story aficionados. These nine stories, all inspired by dreams, tell of the uncanny and the supernatural, occult rituals and otherworldly creatures, malign forces and human madness.
Drawing comparison to masters of the genre such as M. R. James and E. F. Benson, these tales have lost none of their chilling power.
The Gunner
Reputations can be deceiving in this classic crime thriller featuring a jewel thief, a prominent London banker, and a determined detective.
The man known as “Gunner” Haynes is a highly skilled jewel thief with a tough core and a gentlemanly veneer that have earned him some admirers. The respectable, well-connected London banker Luke Maddison runs in an entirely different circle, but still crosses paths with the criminal one winter night at the Ritz-Carlton, when Gunner’s steadying hand saves Luke from a fall. In return, Luke does a favor for Gunner, and a certain bond is cemented.
Later, when trouble arises, the two reunite, and DI Horace Bird, aka the Sparrow, along with a feisty female reporter working undercover, will find themselves pulled into a world of con men and killers.
The Vampyre
This classic vampire story has inspired generations of authors, from Bram Stoker to Charlaine Harris.
A young English gentleman of means, Aubrey is immediately intrigued by Lord Ruthven, the mysterious newcomer among society’s elite. His unknown origin and curious behavior tantalizes Aubrey’s imagination. But the young man soon discovers a sinister character hidden behind his new friend’s glamorous facade.
When the two are set upon by bandits while traveling together in Europe, Ruthven is fatally injured. Before drawing his last breath, he makes the odd request that Aubrey keep his death and crimes secret for a year and a day.
But when Ruthven resurfaces in London—making overtures toward Aubrey’s sister—Aubrey realizes this immortal fiend is a vampyre.
John William Polidori’s The Vampyre is both a classic tale of gothic horror and the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire myth that has been fodder for artists ranging from Anne Rice to Alan Ball to Francis Ford Coppola.
Originally published in 1819, many decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and misattributed to Polidori’s friend Lord Byron, The Vampyre has kept readers up at night for nearly two hundred years.
