Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë went to her grave the year after her first and only novel was published in 1847, and since wasn't a hit that year, she would never know what an enduring masterpiece of Gothic fiction Wuthering Heights would become. It is set in the Yorkshire moors of northern England around the turn of the 19th century, and is told as an extended flashback.

This is not a typical love story: it is the tale of the passionate and powerful love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, who have been friends since childhood, and how their passions eventually unravel and explode in everyone's faces. Though Emily's early death from tuberculosis was a tragic end, she did gain posthumous glory with the help of her sister Charlotte, who wrote an introduction to her book, which upon its second publication was highly praised. This is considered by some to be the first real "tear-jerker" of a novel, so if you're looking for some dark, obsessive, vengeful characters, Wuthering Heights might be right up your alley.