Monroe Free Library

"Lilith is equal if not superior to the best of Poe," raved poet W. H. Auden about this classic Victorian novel. Known as the father of fantasy literature, George MacDonald was a Scottish minister who later turned to writing poetry and novels, gaining acclaim for his children's books and influencing J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Lilith is considered to be one of the most important visionary novels of the nineteenth century. Written in 1895, Lilith...

New York Times–bestselling author Dorothy Eden brings Gilded Age New York and Victorian England to dazzling life in this romantic saga about an American heiress who defies society's expectations by refusing to live without love   The daughter of one of New York City's brash new millionaires and an impoverished socialite, Christabel Spencer inherited both her father's passionate nature and her mother's beauty and breeding. An American debutante...

The author of The Woman in Black returns to the realm of supernatural hauntings in a tale. When Oliver returns to Cambridge, he makes sure to pay a visit to his former professor, now retired and living in a small college apartment. Oliver can't help but notice a peculiar painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. Yet in the foreground, there is an anachronistically modern figure. On this cold winter's...

"For history readers, travelers, and scholars alike, an indispensable behind-the-scenes guide to the great cathedrals of Paris from one of our leading scholars. Eminent French literature professor R. Howard Bloch has become renowned for his insider tours of Paris, given to college students abroad. Long sought after for his encyclopedic knowledge of French cathedrals, Bloch has at last decided to share his intimate knowledge with a wider audience....

From the author of the New York Times bestselling novels THE POSTMISTRESS and THE GUEST BOOK comes Sarah Blake's GRANGE HOUSE. "Pleasing, intricate...[a] delightful book" -New York Times Book Review Maisie Thomas spends every summer at Grange House, a hotel on the coast of Maine ruled by the elegant Miss Grange. In 1896, when Maisie turns 17, her visit marks a turning point. On the morning after her arrival, local fishermen make a gruesome discovery:...

Finally returned to print, Joyce Carol Oates's lost classic: the satirical, often surreal, and beautifully plotted Gothic romance that follows the exploits of the audacious Zinn sisters, whose nineteenth-century pursuit of adventurous lives turns a lens on contemporary American culture When their sister is plucked from the shores of the Bloodsmoor River by an eerie black-silk hot air balloon that sails in through a clear blue sky, the lives of the...

The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) is a novel by Eliza Parsons. Employing themes common to the popular genre of Gothic fiction, Parsons crafts a chilling tale of murder and mystery that remains uniquely entertaining to this day. Referred to as a "horrid" novel in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, The Castle of Wolfenbach was recognized as a terrifying precursor to such classics as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), often considered the quintessential...

Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to...

"What if you could write a new ending for yourself? England, 1898. When Evelyn first married the famous novelist William Aubrey, she was dazzled by his brilliance. But their newlywed bliss is brief when William is gripped by writer's block, and he becomes jealous of Evelyn's writing talent. When he commits the ultimate betrayal--stealing a draft of her novel and passing it off as his own--Evelyn decides to write her way out of their unhappy marriage....

In a literary voice that is both original and powerfully unsettling, William Gay tells the story of Nathan Winer, a young and headstrong Tennessee carpenter who lost his father years ago to a human evil that is greater and closer at hand than any the boy can imagine - until he learns of it first-hand. Gay's remarkable debut novel, The Long Home, is also the story of Amber Rose, a beautiful young woman forced to live beneath that evil who recognizes...