The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first gothic novel as it merges medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture. The book begins on the wedding-day of his sickly son Conrad and princess Isabella. Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic helmet that falls on him from above. This inexplicable event is particularly ominous in light o...

Updated version of the 2004 cult classic that shone a light into the darkest corners of London's criminal underworld. Judas Pig 2023 (rebooted and suited) carries on in the same tradition and, like its predecessor, pulls no punches. It's a tough but darkly funny read from start to finish and not for the faint-hearted.

The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole The History of Caliph Vathek - William Beckford The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe Caleb Williams - William Godwin Wieland: or, The Transformation - Charles Brockden Brown Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Melmoth the Wanderer (Lock and Key Version) - Charles Robert Maturin The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg St. John's Eve - Nikolai Gogol...

HORACE WALPOLE was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, the great statesman, who died Earl of Orford. He was born in 1717, the year in which his father resigned office, remaining in opposition for almost three years before his return to a long tenure of power. Horace Walpole was educated at Eton, where he formed a school friendship with Thomas Gray, who was but a few months older. In 1739 Gray was travelling-companion with Walpole in France and Italy until they differed and parted; but ...

McCoy's hardboiled noir classic, about an Ivy League graduate's criminal rampage through the seedy underground and glitzy high society of an unnamed American cityTo escape prison, Ralph Cotter uses the same genius for planning and penchant for cold-hearted violence that helped earn him a spot in the slammer in the first place. On the lam in a city where he knows nobody, Cotter has nothing to lose, no conscience to hold him back, and no limit to his twisted ambition...

During the Depression, Gloria and Robert enter a dance marathon in return for three square meals a day and a chance at winning the big-money prize. Under the intense scrutiny of the media, corporate sponsors and obsessive fans, the competing couples are put through a series of gruelling and humiliating feats of endurance, until they begin to fight among themselves and betray each other. As days and weeks go by, the tension reaches boiling point, and this pitch-black tale of desire and desp...

"The Castle of Otranto" tells the story of Manfred, the lord of the Castle of Otranto, who seeks to maintain his family's lineage and power. When his son Conrad dies mysteriously on his wedding day, Manfred becomes obsessed with producing a male heir to secure his dynasty. He is willing to go to extreme lengths, including defying societal and moral conventions, to achieve his goal.The novel is characterized by its eerie atmosphere, supernatural occurrences, and elements of suspense and hor...

A young law professor is hired to clean up a city strangled by corruptionNemo Crespi's organization has a hand in everything from gambling rackets to hotels to newspapers. To combat him, the governor needs a special prosecutor he can trust, someone free of political ambitions . . . someone like John Conroy, a twenty-nine-year-old law professor as unlikely for the prosecutor job as anyone. Cynical, hardscrabble Conroy is reluctant to accept, until he realizes that th...

The Castle of Otranto is considered to be the first "Gothic" novel-that is, containing a combination of tropes, like hidden passages, haunted paintings, mysterious sounds, skeletal ghosts, ancestral curses, and unexplained deaths, that essentially invented the genre later made famous by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, or Henry James. Walpole made a point of creating a novel that blends supernatural elements with more realistic depictions of characters and events.

According to Wikipedia: "Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 2 March 1797), was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors, and for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Along with the book, his literary reputation rests on his Letters, which are of significant soc...

McCoy's classic, slyly funny novel about a pair of young actors trying to make it in a pitiless HollywoodFor aspiring actor Ralph Carston, all roads lead to Hollywood—but none seem to be direct or easy. The handsome Georgia native immediately finds that his Southern accent is one strike against him, though he manages to eke out a living as an extra alongside his pretty roommate Mona Matthews. But the big break for these two young hopefuls finally arrives in a curiou...

The long-awaited prequel to Judas Pig. Set in the early Eighties, Soho Swag finds Billy Abrahams scratching a living committing petty crimes on the streets of South London. Billy is offered the chance to leave behind his hand-to-mouth existence to go to work for Soho godfather Bernie Silver, determined to re-establish his authority in London's West End after spending time in prison for murder and the biggest police corruption case in British history.