7 Books Wednesday Addams would approve of: horror, mystery and classic literature

Wednesday Addams doesn't read for fashion or to pass the time: she reads to dig into the dark, to understand what others are afraid to name, to challenge her own mind. She seeks out stories of mystery, of subtle horror, of ancient secrets and emotions contained beneath a seemingly cold surface. This list brings together seven titles she would undoubtedly approve of: novels that not only send shivers down her spine, but invite her to think, to question, and to see beauty even in the bleak.

1. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (1818)

It's not theory: in the series Wednesday, the protagonist herself says that “Mary Shelley is his literary heroine... and his enemy”.”, After receiving the Frankenstein book as a gift from his teacher Thornhill, which confirms that it is his favourite novel.
What makes this book special on your bookshelf is not the assembled monsters, but the overweening ambition and guilt that explodes. It is the perfect mirror: a young creator silently competing with a literary figure who embodied moral terror. I would read it with a notebook beside me, marking every dilemma between creator and creature, every note on the loneliness of genius and the tragedy of rejection.

The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe (1794)

A long and involving novel: Emily St. Aubert, widowhood, Italian castles, landscapes that are characters, and slowly building tension. Radcliffe builds the suspense patiently, feeding the imagination rather than splashing gratuitous scares. Wednesday would find herself reading like an emotional archaeologist, unravelling secrets among vineyards and crypts, enjoying the mix of natural beauty and human wickedness. It's perfect for evenings of sustained reading, with overly bitter tea and the light of a lamp flickering just enough.

3. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole (1764)

The novel that is often pointed to as the first gothic work: a castle, omens, heroes and inherited follies. It is not sophisticated horror; it is nocturnal theatre, ornate and overblown, the prototype of those creaking mansions with a history of their own. Wednesday would appreciate its drama: not for the subtlety, but for the purity of the artifice. He would love to underline in pencil the descriptions of the passages and, with an almost inaudible smile, note down what architectural trappings he would employ in his own laboratory of curiosities.

4. Carmilla - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

Before the vampire became synonymous with the cape and modern seduction, Carmilla offered a different tension: sex, desire and dangerous intimacy in a provincial atmosphere that closes in like a net. The figure of Carmilla - feminine, enigmatic - would dialogue with the more analytical Wednesday: she is interested in the anatomy of intimate fear, the way in which the forbidden is disguised as devotion. A short but dense story, perfect for interrupting an evening with a dry laugh at the closing of the last page.

5. The Great God Pan - Arthur Machen (1894)

A long tale of experiments on the edge of the permissible and consequences that trickle down through generations. Machen builds terror not with visible monsters, but with what the human mind fails to admit. Wednesday would enjoy his apocalyptic subtlety: the unsettling that is not named, that which remains in the cracks of language. This text is to be read half-voiced, with the window ajar and the sound of rain as accompaniment, because the plot suggests that something - something vast and indifferent - is watching from outside the human focus.

6. Melmoth the Wanderer - Charles Robert Maturin (1820)

A diabolical pact, journeys through confessionals and inns, stories embedded within stories: Melmoth searches for the one who will inherit his doom. The nested story structure makes the book a necklace of small tragedies; its moral tone, dark and exaggerated, would appeal to Wednesday for its mixture of grandiloquence and human misery. This is the text to read with a notebook at hand: to note the twists of regret, the slabs of guilt that grow colder with each chapter.

7. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson (1962)

A little domestic poison: two isolated sisters, a community that looks on with envy and contempt, and a narrator - Merricat - whose strange habits create an unsettling charm. Shirley Jackson turns the everyday into a trap; home is both refuge and prison. Wednesday would immediately connect with the book's emotional economy: that mix of irony, rancour and putrid tenderness that makes the novel a dissection of otherness within the familiar. It's reading for when you want to feel that the house - and its silence - have stories that dare not be told.

And there you have it: a collection of books that would enlighten the analytical mind of Wednesday Addams. Books that invite her to smile as she questions the nature of creation, that take her into mansions that breathe loneliness, or whisper to her the horror that the everyday dare not name. Each title is a mirror that reflects her own fascination with power, isolation, transgression and that humour that only she understands. In this ideal bookshop, Wednesday does not seek solace or company: she finds inspiration to explore her darkest corners and, with that exact gaze, to continue challenging the world with just a well-formulated sentence and a skull carefully placed on the edge of the table.