Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

"Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature's strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond. Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn't exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are...

A collection of 100 essays by leading horror writers nominating their own choices for the best books in the genre.

"An acclaimed historian sleuths out literature's most famous vampire, uncovering the source material--from folklore and history to personas including Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman--behind Bram Stoker's bloody creation"--Dust jacket flap.

The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the modern imagination. It's recognition factor rivals, in its own perverse way, the familiarity of Santa Claus. Most of us can recite without prompting the salient characteristics of the vampire: sleeping by day in its coffin, rising at dusk to feed on the blood of the living; the ability to shapeshift into a bat, wolf, or mist; a mortal vulnerability to a wooden...