The 100 best moderately difficult supernatural and gothic books

No. 11 on this list. The Yellow Wall-Paper · Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1892

It is a fixture of American literature and women's studies courses and widely anthologized. Its place sits just below the great canon, and the Open Library record lists it among open syllabus project works.

No. 12 on this list. The Lottery and Other Stories · Shirley Jackson · 1949

The title story 'The Lottery' is one of the most anthologized and taught short stories in the American canon, appearing in virtually every introduction-to-fiction textbook. The collection itself appears regularly on American short-story syllabi. Jackson's work has experienced a major critical reassessment since the 2010s, elevating her from genre curiosity to recognized American master.

No. 13 on this list. Sanctuary · William Faulkner · 1931

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Sanctuary appears on 92 university syllabi (49th percentile on Open Syllabus) and Wikipedia carries articles in 29 languages. Library of America and NYRB Classics both publish it in prestige editions. It is taught consistently in American modernism and Southern Gothic courses, though overshadowed on syllabi by The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying.

No. 14 on this list. Mourning Becomes Electra · Eugene O'Neill · 1931

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Widely regarded as O'Neill's masterwork alongside 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' and a defining achievement of American theater. The trilogy appears consistently in academic curricula for American drama and 20th-century literature. It represents the apex of O'Neill's ambitious attempt to transplant Greek tragedy onto American soil, and its exploration of psychological realism through classical form remains influential. While perhaps less universally known than some novels, it holds unquestioned status as a landmark of serious American theatrical literature.

No. 15 on this list. Hawksmoor · Peter Ackroyd · 1985

Hawksmoor holds significant position in postmodern British fiction and is widely taught in university literature courses. While not quite at the level of Ulysses or Beloved, it is consistently included in surveys of contemporary British literature and discussions of historiographic metafiction. The novel appears regularly on critical reading lists for postmodernism, Gothic revival, and late 20th-century British fiction, establishing its place in the extended literary canon.

No. 16 on this list. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde · Robert Louis Stevenson

Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council, Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

No syllabus or Wikipedia data has been collected for this record yet, but the novella is a fixture of English curricula from secondary school through university, and "Jekyll and Hyde" has become common shorthand for a divided personality—cultural saturation on par with Frankenstein and Dracula.

No. 17 on this list. Sing, Unburied, Sing · Jesmyn Ward · 2018

Sing, Unburied, Sing appears on 71 university syllabi — a solid midrange presence, placing it in the 46th percentile of works in the database. It is widely taught in contemporary American literature, Southern literature, and African American literature courses, though it has not yet achieved the deep canonical entrenchment of Morrison or Faulkner. Its teaching presence reflects a novel still being absorbed into the curriculum in the decade since its 2017 publication, with significant room for that footprint to grow.

No. 18 on this list. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka · Nikolai Gogol · 1832

Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a foundational text in Russian and Ukrainian literary history, appearing in Slavic literature and comparative folklore curricula worldwide. While it lacks the global syllabus penetration of Gogol's later Dead Souls or The Overcoat — works more central to realism courses — it is the required starting point for any study of Gogol's development. The book is likely in the 60th–70th percentile of canonical teaching across world literature programs.

No. 19 on this list. At the Mountains of Madness · H.P. Lovecraft · 1936

A cornerstone of weird fiction and cosmic horror, widely taught in genre studies and horror literature courses. No verified syllabus data was found in the database, but the work is considered essential reading within its genre and is referenced in virtually every discussion of Lovecraft's legacy and the horror tradition he established.

No. 20 on this list. Something Wicked This Way Comes · Ray Bradbury · 1962

Widely taught in American high school and university courses, particularly in science fiction and American literature surveys. It appears on numerous authoritative lists — including the Modern Library's reader poll — and is frequently cited as essential Bradbury alongside 'Fahrenheit 451.' No syllabus data was captured, but its classroom presence is well-documented.

No. 21 on this list. Cromwell · Victor Hugo · 1827

The play is rarely read; the preface is one of the most important documents in French literary history. Its canonical status rests almost entirely on the theoretical manifesto.

No. 22 on this list. 1Q84 · Haruki Murakami · 2009

1Q84 is considered Murakami's most ambitious work and appears on contemporary world literature syllabi and essential Murakami reading lists globally. No syllabus data was available in the database, but the novel's scope, its explicit engagement with Orwell, and its place in Murakami's career place it above mid-tier literary fiction. It is not at the level of canonical anchors like Ulysses or Beloved, but it is required reading for anyone studying contemporary Japanese literary fiction.

No. 23 on this list. Carmilla · Sheridan Le Fanu · 1872

Carmilla is a fixture in Gothic literature and vampire fiction courses, recognized as the foundational pre-Dracula vampire text and a landmark of Victorian horror. Its Wikipedia article spans 40+ languages, and it appears regularly on 'essential horror' and 'Gothic fiction' reading lists. Less broadly canonical than Frankenstein or Dracula but firmly established within the Gothic literary tradition.

No. 24 on this list. The Mysteries of Udolpho · Ann Radcliffe · 1794

The Mysteries of Udolpho is a foundational text taught in 18th-century literature, Gothic studies, and women's writing courses in universities worldwide. Its Wikipedia article spans over 40 languages. Jane Austen's parody in Northanger Abbey has guaranteed it a permanent place in the British literary canon—any reader of Austen eventually encounters Udolpho. It sits at the center of every Gothic fiction course.

No. 25 on this list. The Ballad of the Sad Café · Carson McCullers · 1951

Miss Amelia Evans runs the general store in a nameless Georgia mill town: six feet two inches tall, with bones and muscles like a man, a medical skill she deploys without a license, and a decade-old marriage she annulled after ten days by throwing her husband Marvin Macy out the front door. Then one April evening a hunchbacked dwarf named Cousin Lymon arrives, claims kinship, and Miss Amelia does something no one has ever seen her do — she opens a room, sets out chairs, and pours her whiskey. The café lasts six years. Carson McCullers frames the whole story as a meditation on the nature of love, delivered by an omniscient narrator who stops the plot to lecture us directly: the lover and the beloved are never, in any real sense, the same person. One gives; the other merely consents to be loved. Marvin Macy, released from prison, walks back into town, and Cousin Lymon falls for him immediately and completely. Everything that follows is as inevitable as a Greek tragedy, and as inexplicable. The novella ends where it begins — the café boarded up, Miss Amelia alone upstairs, her face pressed to a crack in the shutters. McCullers writes Southern Gothic without blood and salvation — just loneliness, desire, and the strange temporary grace of a room where people are allowed to linger.

No. 26 on this list. The Monk · Matthew Gregory Lewis · 1796

Standard reading in university Gothic literature and 18th-century fiction courses, though more specialized than broadly canonical works. The novel established many conventions of the Gothic genre that became touchstones for the Romantic period and beyond. No syllabus data is available in the database, but the book has remained continuously in print since 1796 and features in most surveys of British Romantic-era fiction.

No. 27 on this list. Ironweed · William Kennedy · 1984

Ranked 92nd on the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and included in the 1001 Books list. Appears on 23 university syllabi (34th percentile), mostly in courses on contemporary American fiction.

No. 28 on this list. It · Stephen King · 1986

Stephen King's It appears on relatively few university syllabi — it sits outside the traditional literary canon — but it features in popular culture, horror studies, and genre fiction courses. Wikipedia articles exist in over 40 languages, and the novel consistently appears on lists of the greatest horror novels. Its cultural footprint far exceeds its academic presence.

No. 29 on this list. The Witches of Eastwick · John Updike · 1984

The Witches of Eastwick is taught in American fiction and feminist literary theory courses but does not appear on core syllabi with the frequency of Updike's Rabbit, Run. It features on several 'best American novels of the 20th century' lists and has maintained continuous reader attention partly through the 1987 film adaptation. Not a curriculum fixture, but solidly established in the Updike canon.

No. 30 on this list. Child of God · Cormac McCarthy · 1973

Lester Ballard loses his family farm at a county auction and retreats into the mountains of Sevier County, Tennessee. What follows is one of American fiction's most unsettling descents — not into madness exactly, but into a state so stripped of social connection that ordinary moral categories stop applying. McCarthy tracks Ballard's passage from petty trespassing and theft to murder to necrophilia with the same flat, attentive prose he uses for the texture of frost on a barn door or the behavior of a rifle at a shooting gallery. The novel's title comes from the narrator's direct address to the reader: 'A child of God much like yourself perhaps.' That 'perhaps' does its work. McCarthy offers no psychological explanation, no sociological accounting, no redemption arc. Ballard is described with the same precision as the landscape — Saxon and Celtic bloods, unclean, moving through the chaff in slants of light — and the landscape is described as if it too had crimes in it. The novel runs under two hundred pages and is organized as fragments, many only a paragraph long, interspersed with community voices who remember Ballard in passing. What accumulates is a portrait of dispossession so complete it has nowhere to go but underground. McCarthy asks readers to consider what it means that this man is also a child of God. He declines to answer.