Dracula

Dracula is a Gothic novel told through diaries, letters, telegrams and newspaper clippings. It begins when a young English solicitor, Jonathan Harker, travels to a remote castle in Transylvania to help a nobleman, Count Dracula, arrange the purchase of property in England. Strange events soon make Harker uneasy about his host.

The story then moves to England, where a small group of friends, among them Mina Harker and the scholar Professor Van Helsing, come to face a growing and unnatural danger. The novel mixes suspense, folklore and Victorian anxieties about science, foreign threats and modern life. It created the template for the modern vampire story and remains one of the most influential horror novels ever written.