Which gothic classics can I read free this Halloween?

Seventeen books, oldest first

• The Castle of Otranto (1764), Horace Walpole. Where gothic began: a cursed castle and a giant helmet that falls out of the sky.
• The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Ann Radcliffe. Mountains, a heroine locked away, and ghosts that turn out to have explanations.
• The Monk (1796), Matthew Gregory Lewis. The one that shocked its first readers. It still does.
• Northanger Abbey (1817), Jane Austen. Austen laughing at all of the above. Even funnier after Udolpho.
• Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Shelley. A story inside a story inside letters, and a creature who argues back.
• The Vampyre (1819), John William Polidori. Written in the same Lake Geneva summer as Frankenstein.
• Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), Charles Robert Maturin. A man who sold his soul, told through tales within tales.
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Washington Irving. The headless horseman, in one evening.
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), Edgar Allan Poe. A few pages, one crumbling house, sentences that never seem to end.
• Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood (1845–47). A penny dreadful sold in weekly parts. Enormous, lurid, and fun.
• Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Brontë. Haunted moors, and old Joseph, whose Yorkshire can fill a paragraph.
• The Woman in White (1859–60), Wilkie Collins. A sensation novel told witness by witness.
• Uncle Silas (1864), J. Sheridan Le Fanu. An heiress, a sinister uncle, and a governess whose French accent is spelled out on the page.
• Carmilla (1872), J. Sheridan Le Fanu. A vampire story twenty-five years before Dracula. Short, and still unsettling. You will find it on its own and inside In a Glass Darkly.
• The Haunted Hotel (1878), Wilkie Collins. A ghost story in a Venetian palace turned hotel.
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Robert Louis Stevenson. Short enough for one dark night.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Oscar Wilde. The portrait ages. He doesn’t.

Titles can vary a little by App Store country. Each book’s page tells you why it is free to read.

Stuck on a line? That’s normal

These books were written for readers two hundred years ago. Three things trip people up today:

• Accents spelled out. In Uncle Silas the governess says "cheaile" for child. Select it, tap Explain, and the answer comes back in the context of the scene.
• Words that changed. "Gay", "awful" and "presently" often meant something else. Explain tells you what they mean here.
• Half-page sentences. Radcliffe and Poe love them. Ask for a plain-English version, then read the original again. It suddenly flows.

AI can get things wrong, which is why the original never leaves the page.

Not sure where to start?

• One evening: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, then The Fall of the House of Usher.
• One weekend: Carmilla, then Jekyll and Hyde.
• All of October: Frankenstein, The Woman in White, then Uncle Silas.

Step by step

1. 01

   Find it

   Open the Library and search for the title, say "Carmilla". Tap download. No account needed.

2. 02

   Read until something stops you

   Press and hold, then drag across the word or the sentence.

3. 03

   Tap Explain or Translate

   The answer opens over the page, with the text right behind it.

4. 04

   Keep the good lines

   Highlight them, or turn one into a quote card to share.