100 Books Like The House of the Seven Gables

I loved this book because, again, it was thought-provoking. It was unimaginable to think humans could behave in this way and then it made me realise that we do behave in an unimaginable fashion in real life. This book shows the mob mentality and how ‘tradition’ keeps going despite not knowing where it started and why it continues.

I found the concept of the lottery both disturbing and thought provoking. How far will people go in the name of superstition and fear. I loved that Shirley Jackson with a short story should produce such darkness and depth in humanity and it had me thinking for quite a while.

This early American novel starts off with an episode of human spontaneous combustion, followed by repeated episodes of characters hearing disembodied voices.

Brown’s novel uses these Gothic devices and a couple of real-life murder cases to explore religious and political issues that preoccupied Americans in the years after the Revolution. How do we know whether we’re really being guided by reason? What is the basis of authority?

Most editions of Wieland include Brown’s prequel Memoirs of Carwin, which complicates the story by placing one of the main characters in an Illuminati-like organization. American Gothic literature pretty much starts here.  

This book didn’t start out in the usual way. That in itself grabbed my attention. It’s a thriller, so I expect the first paragraph at least to pull me in. It didn’t grab me the way most do; it slowly sucked me in until I found myself not wanting to put it down.

The two main characters seemed to be at odds. One wanting to help and one refusing to speak. I don’t understand not trying to find answers that keep me silent. It must be the curiosity that kept me reading. Because the woman could speak. At least she could at one time. Either it was something traumatic, or it was just plain stubbornness. Or was I missing the entire point? Always an option. 

First of all, Drood is a fantastic trip into the macabre. And, because I love to weave actual truths into my stories, either real-life experiences or real encounters, I am fascinated that Simmons based his novel on the last five years of Charles Dickens's life. Whether this is entirely speculation or otherwise, this novel draws on the character found in Dickens's last and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Simmons does precisely what I hope to do with my stories; draw the reader into my world and leave them wondering what parts were based on unexpected truths. 

I love The Story of An Hour: Short Story by Kate Chopin because this tale has a delicious plot twist and portrays irony at its finest. I resonate with the feminist message — the oppression and the realization of what the heart truly desires and the heartbreak of that being ripped away. Very emotive. I felt what the main character was feeling and didn’t see the ending coming. This is my favorite type of story and the kind I love to write.

This might seem like a strange pick, since it’s almost never described in terms of Gothicism.

Douglass’s narrative is essential reading regardless—a compelling narrative and one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature. What makes it Gothic? In Douglass’s world, nothing is what it appears to be, because slavery has corrupted not only institutions but virtually all personal relationships. There are trap doors everywhere and a constant threat of violence.

A century and a half before Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Douglass’s book describes the Gothic horror of everyday life under slavery.

No one reads this book nowadays, but in the 1840s and 50s, readers were captivated: it was the nation’s most popular novel. Published in monthly installments, the style is lurid, hallucinatory, a fever delirium, as befits a hastily improvised serial novel written by Edgar Allen Poe’s bestie.

The plot is impossible to summarize, but try this: “Monks Hall” is a place where Philadelphia’s elite—politicians, ministers, publishers, medical professors, businessmen, judges, and lawyers—go to fraternally seduce and rape virgins, torture and murder their enemies, and revel in their hypocrisy. And the ringleader, or maybe just the concierge, is Devil-Bug, a ghoulish murderer, blackmailer, thief, and bodysnatcher.

The novel consists of a succession of terrible things these terrible men do to good women, orphans, and weak men. One bad thing after another… It’s like Dickens on a bad acid trip. And, of course, anatomy figures. I’ll just cite two memorable scenes. First,… show more.

Dickinson isn’t always Gothic, but many of her best and best-known poems revolve around that central Gothic question: what is it like to be dead?

Poems beginning with lines like “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died,” “Because I could not stop for Death,” “If I may have it, when it’s Dead,” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” play along the boundary between the living and the dead and ask uncomfortable questions about the afterlife, such as whether there is one.

It’s surely no coincidence that her creative peak coincided with the Civil War. But what makes Dickinson so compelling, for me at least, is her unique vocabulary, which suggests fears and other (sometimes ecstatic) emotions that no one else has managed to describe. Her poems are full of surprise and mystery.

This edition reproduces Dickinson’s own collections of her poems—“fascicles” or homemade books—giving… show more.

I recommend this book because Nathaniel Hawthorne is my favorite author, a historical figure whose connections to his birthplace of Salem, Massachusetts influenced his religion, his politics, his writing and haunted him through life. His cousin Susannah Ingersoll lived in the House of the Seven Gables, my favorite house in the world, Salem’s most famous landmark, and the subject of Hawthorne’s most famous novel. I have always been fascinated with the Salem witch trials, and know that Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather “Hanging” Judge John Hathorne condemned 19 innocent people to death on false accusations of witchcraft. Nathaniel added the ‘w’ to his name to distance himself from his notorious ancestor. You will learn about how he met his wife, Sophia Peabody, also a Salem native, and how she inspired him. It helped me understand Nathaniel as a person as well as a famous author, and further inspired me to write my novel.  

This collection of contemporary 17th century works covering (mostly New England) witch-related cases before, during and after the 1692 trials was one of the earliest sources I discovered at my local public library back in the early 1960s. It provides a window into the varying reactions people had to the uncanny and what they did about it.