Monroe Free Library

The novel is partly inspired by historical events at the Paris Opera during the nineteenth century and an apocryphal tale concerning the use of a former ballet pupil's skeleton in Carl Maria von Weber's 1841 production of Der Freischütz. It has been successfully adapted into various stage and film adaptations, most notable of which are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical.

First published in 1852, "The Blithedale Romance" is the third of Nathaniel Hawthorne's romantic novels. Set in the utopian communal farm called Blithedale in the 1840's, the novel tells the story of four inhabitants of the commune: Hollingsworth, a misogynist philanthropist obsessed with turning Blithedale into a colony for the reformation of criminals; Zenobia, a passionate feminist; Priscilla, a mysterious lady with a hidden agenda who turns out...

'I am Dracula. And I bid you welcome to my house.' He is deathly pale. His fingernails are cut to sharp points. His teeth protrude menacingly from his mouth in clouds of rancid breath. Yet even Count Dracula's unnerving appearance and the frightened reaction of the local peasants fail to warn Jonathan Harker, a young man from England, about his host. Little does Jonathan know that this is a land where babies are snatched for their blood and wolves...

The tale of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, and his struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.