Gumberg Library Staff Profiles

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The vampire novel that defined a genre by tapping into our deepest fears and darkest fantasies A junior solicitor travels to Transylvania to meet with an important client, the mysterious Count Dracula. Ignoring the dire warnings of local townsfolk, he allows himself to be seduced by the count's courtly manners and erudite charm. Too late, the solicitor realizes that he is a prisoner of Castle Dracula, his guards a trio of voluptuous young women with sharp white teeth and a taste for blood. Soon thereafter, the solicitor's fiancée, Mina, visits a friend on the English coast. The town is full of speculation over a Russian ship run aground nearby, its crew missing, the dead body of its captain, crucifix in hand, lashed to the wheel. A giant dog was seen leaping from the deck before disappearing into the countryside. The ship's cargo: fifty boxes of Transylvanian dirt. As the beautiful Mina will soon learn, Count Dracula has arrived.  At once a Gothic reflection of the Victorian era and a timeless tale of sinister lust, Bram Stoker's Dracula has inspired countless adaptations--none with the same power to quicken the pulse as the original.

The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings--the greatest fantasy epic of all time--which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.   Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read The dark, fearsome Ringwraiths are searching for a Hobbit. Frodo Baggins knows that they are seeking him and the Ring he bears--the Ring of Power that will enable evil Sauron to destroy all that is good in Middle-earth. Now it is up to Frodo and his faithful servant, Sam, with a small band of companions, to carry the Ring to the one place it can be destroyed: Mount Doom, in the very center of Sauron's realm.

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The premier novel of the French Revolution, by England's greatest author. Set against the bloodthirsty backdrop of revolutionary France, this monumental saga--one of the most famous works in all of literature--is at its heart the story of a beautiful woman and the two men who compete for her love: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who renounces his heritage, yet stands accused of treason in the rush to the guillotine, and Sydney Carton, a disillusioned English barrister who finds his salvation in the ultimate act of sacrifice. Full of rich historical details and populated by a sprawling cast of characters, Charles Dickens's masterwork is epic in every sense of the word. Yet its finest achievement may be the intimate moments shared by three people who have the foresight and the courage to see beyond the chaos that surrounds them. A novel whose contradictions are laid bare from the very start--"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"--A Tale of Two Cities is the stuff of life, and great art.