When solicitor's clerk Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania on business to meet a mysterious Romanian count named Dracula|he little expects the horrors this strange meeting will unleash. Thus Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of blood and passion begins|rapidly accelerating from Harker's nightmarish experiences in Castle Dracula to a full-fledged vampiric assault on late-Victorian London itself. The story|narrated through a collection of documents-primarily journal entries and letters-chronicles the desperate efforts of a band of gentlemen to protect the virtue of their ladies and lay to rest the ancient threat once and for all.

Often vacillating wildly between the terrible and the comic|Dracula at the same time brings to life a host of compelling themes: tensions between antiquity and modernity; the powers and limitations of technology; the critical importance of feminine virtue; the difference between superstition and religion; the nature of evil; and|perhaps most compellingly|the complex relationship between ancient faith and scientific enlightenment. More vivid than any of its varied film adaptations|and over a century after its first publication, Dracula still retains its sharp bite.