Five Books To Elevate Your Spooky Season

Gothic(ish) classics for a classier Halloween

Oct 14, 2024

*Hope I,* 1903 by Gustav Klimt. I love how defiantly calm she is despite all the death and fear around her, much like a true gothic heroine needs to be.

Welcome to Five Books For, a newsletter for people who love great stories. I’m so happy you’re here.

I know not everyone loves seasonal reading, let alone spooky or creepy reading for Halloween. This time last year (which reminds me that I have missed the one year anniversary of FBF!) we looked at books in a range of different genres which all fitted a Halloween theme. This year I thought it would be fun to look at a few classics - these are some of the books that helped create some of the genres we know and love today; not because they are necessarily prime examples of spooky stories but because their authors were some of the first to create an atmosphere of dread and apprehension. While technically none of these books are ‘true’ Gothic novels, each of them borrows from that tradition to create a story filled with atmosphere, even though they are all very different. These are books that are worth reading at any time of year, but if you do feel like something atmospheric and a bit more refined than some of the usual Halloween fare, then there is plenty to choose from here. I hope you find at least one new one to add to your reading list and maybe enjoy as the autumn nights draw in.

Okay, let’s dive in!

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”

So what’s it about? Jane Eyre is a woman whose early life has been beset by poverty and cruelty, until she forges a new life for herself first as a teacher and then as a governess through strength of character and hard work. Working for the circumspect Mr. Rochester, Jane begins to secretly fall in love with him even as she knows their social stations are vastly different and would usually preclude any type of relationship from taking place between them. They grow closer after she rescues him from a mysterious fire and Jane has hope, until it suddenly seems that Rochester is about to propose to another woman, leaving Jane in turmoil. However, he instead proposes to her, and her dreams of marrying him seem to be about to come true, until a terrible truth comes to light which will turn Jane’s life upside down.

What’s great about it? Jane is surely one of the best heroines ever written; she's intelligent, thoughtful, fiercely independent and spirited. She's also described as being plain, so doesn't have the luxury of beauty to help her along in life, which I think makes her even more compelling. Nothing in her life has been easy; she has to fight for everything and she is quick to realise that her own strength and dignity are some of the only things under her control. The book is widely regarded as one of the great literary novels and the quality of the writing is exceptional. It explores some weighty themes including religion, home and the sense of belonging, love (often in relation to autonomy) and of course social class and gender, but none of those things ever overtake the narrative or the characterisation to feel clumsy but instead are thoughtfully and subtly examined. I especially love how Brontë manages to explore Jane’s inner life and the formation of her character within the wider context of the story’s themes.

Give it a try if: you like intelligent, resourceful heroines; you love classics; you love unlikely love stories; you love a redemption arc; you like books with a great twist; you love books which have inspired modern thrillers; you love novels that explore philosophical questions without sacrificing plot or character.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

So what’s it about? Pip is an orphan being raised by his older sister and her kindly husband, when one Christmas Eve in the marshes near his home he encounters an escaped convict, who threatens him into bringing food and tools to help remove his shackles. As Pip gets older he starts to visit Miss Havisham, a local spinster with an adopted daughter called Estella, who Pip falls in love with despite her coldness towards him. Eventually Pip comes into a sum of money from an anonymous benefactor which will allow him to become a gentleman, and of course, being Dickens, the books takes all kinds of twists and turns before we find out whether Pip will be able to build a good life for himself and whether he and Estella will finally end up together.

What’s great about it? This is one of the most obvious examples of where the tradition of gothic fiction influenced Dickens. While the plot isn’t strictly gothic per se, various elements of the story certainly are: after all, who could be more gothic than Miss Havisham? Like all of Dickens’ books, it’s a great story. Pip is a sympathetic character who you can root for and we see him grow and change in lots of ways as the novel progresses. As ever with Dickens, there’s a huge cast of characters whose fates are intertwined with each other, with good guys we can cheer on and plenty of bad guys we can love to hate. Dickens uses Pip’s story to explore some of his favourite themes of wealth, poverty and inequality, good and evil, and of course love. Lots of the characters here have entered popular culture, from Miss Havisham sitting in her decaying house, still dressed in her wedding dress from the day she was abandoned at the altar, to the convict Magwitch who Pip helps on that fateful Christmas Eve and once you’ve read the book they will travel with you forever.

Give it a try if: you love novels with lots of plot twists; you love Victorian classics; you love coming of age stories; you love stories where characters have to overcome lots of hardship to triumph in the end; you love books with lots of drama; you love books with a big cast of characters; you love stories of good overcoming evil; you love books with clearly defined goodies and baddies.

The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”

So what’s it about? The Woman In White follows the story of a teacher called Walter who begins teaching two sisters at a country house in the northwest of England. Walter soon falls in love with his student Laura, despite the fact that she is already engaged to another man. However, Laura’s planned marriage goes ahead and Walter travels abroad in an attempt to move on with his life. While he is away, there are all kinds of nefarious goings on back at Limmeridge House, including swapped identities, deaths and false imprisonment. Can Walter return to rescue Laura from the terrible situation her marriage has put her in? Will he be able to outwit Laura’s husband and his cunning friend Count Fosco?

What’s great about it? This is often described as being one of the first detective novels and while it’s a great read for anyone, if you love mystery novels then there’s a special pleasure in being able to read such an early example of the style and one of the foundational novels of the genre. It’s also generally considered to be one of the best novels ever written in English and when you read it I’m sure you'll agree. Again, there is atmosphere in spades and lots of twists and turns as well as some truly memorable characters, especially the villains. Interestingly, one of the themes the book is keen to explore is the way in which women at the time were so disadvantaged by marriage and open to exploitation, which feels like a rather progressive view for the time it was written.

Give it a try if: you love reading novels that are foundational to their genres; you love a clever plot; you love a love story; you love books with dastardly plans that get foiled; you love great characters, especially villains.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.’’

So what’s it about? This is something of a parody of a gothic novel rather than being truly gothic but it does hold to a lot of the conventions of the genre. It follows the story of Catherine Moreland, who at 18 is the youngest of Austen’s protagonists and in many ways is less mature than Austen’s usual leads. Obsessed with gothic novels, Catherine dreams of romance and when she meets Henry Tilney while visiting Bath, is delighted to be invited to visit his home in the countryside. Catherine expects the house to be dark, spooky and full of secrets but is chagrined to realise that she has in fact allowed her imagination to run away with her. There are, of course, various ups and downs in Catherine’s relationship with Henry as well as additional sub-plots featuring Catherine’s friend Isabella and Henry’s sister Eleanor which brings more depth to the story and provide some helpful counterpoints to Catherine’s story.

What’s great about it? Interestingly, this is actually Austen’s first novel, although it was the last to be published, together with Persuasion, after her death. There is a coming of age aspect to this novel which Austen doesn’t really tackle in her other books, and seeing Catherine develop through her character arc as the book progresses is particularly satisfying. From the beginning Catherine is described as being generally quite ordinary: not a great beauty, not particularly clever and good without being particularly virtuous. I quite like a more ordinary heroine and I think they’ve become more common in recent fiction than they were in the 20th century; Bridget Jones might be a good example of a very ordinary late 20th-century heroine and I suspect that one of the reasons she was so popular was that her very ordinariness was refreshingly unusual (as well as Helen Fielding’s very funny prose, of course). It’s somehow satisfying that Bridget is herself based on an Austen character but I think Catherine is probably the most ordinary of Austen’s heroines. I also (perhaps unsurprisingly) love the fact that she’s an avid reader who at times struggles to distinguish between her fictional and real worlds. Considering that it is Austen’s earliest work, a fact which she herself felt needed to be explained to the reader, the book has had a long resonance in popular culture; it’s quoted, for example, at the beginning of Ian Ewan’s Atonement.

Give it a try if: you love books which send the main character through a big developmental arc; you love coming of age stories; you like parody and satire; you love any of Austen’s other work; you love a love story; you love books where people’s expectations are cleverly confounded.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

“There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you.’’

So what’s it about? Sherlock Holmes finds himself with a new client: Sir Henry Baskerville has come into a sizeable inheritance and has moved to England from Canada to claim it, but is concerned about a local legend regarding his new home and a diabolical hound that is said to haunt the heirs of the Baskervilles. Holmes sends Watson down to Baskerville Hall in Dartmoor to act as a bodyguard to Sir Henry while he investigates and soon finds all kinds of intrigues and suspicious happenings at play, up against an opponent who even Holmes thinks is tricky.

What’s great about it? Surely one of the most famous detective stories ever written, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is the third Sherlock Holmes novel and also the story which brought Holmes back from the dead after Conan Doyle killed him off. This book has more of a supernatural slant than his other works, but of course the solution is as logical as any other Holmes case. It is so atmospheric and, like all of the Holmes stories, brilliantly written, and although it’s a novel it goes by so quickly that it doesn’t feel long at all. It has a great cast of characters which makes for great entertainment if, like me, you like to see if you can spot the murderer before the solution is revealed at the end.

Give it a try if: you love clever mysteries; you love Sherlock Holmes or any other great detective; you love books with grand, creepy houses; you love books set in spooky locations; you love stories which seem supernatural but in fact turn out to be logical.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you found something good to read here. As ever, I’d love to hear if you’ve read and loved (or indeed hated) any of the books here, and which ones you’d add to the list. You can reply directly to this email or leave a comment by clicking the button below.