“Wuthering Heights” is finally out in the world, and while I believe Emerald Fennell deserves to be tried for crimes against cinema for this festering turd of a film, there is thankfully one silver lining to its release: it’s apparently got more people reading again. According to Penguin, UK sales of Wuthering Heights have risen by a staggering 469 per cent in the last year alone. While some people have taken to TikTok to complain about how hard Emily Brontë’s masterpiece is to read, others – those with blessedly unrotted brains – have discovered a new love for literature which boldly grapples with the taboo. 

If you’ve recently read (or rediscovered) Wuthering Heights and are hungry for more fiction which features ill-fated lovers, supernatural goings-on, or bloodthirsty revenge, read on for our top recommendations.

ANNA KARENINA, LEO TOLSTOY

Widely regarded as one of the best novels of all time, Anna Karenina is also one of the greatest love stories. As with Wuthering Heights, some people object to it being described in that way, insisting that it is instead a cautionary tale about the dangers of all-consuming passion (true enough). But love in real life isn’t always perfectly boundaried and healthy, and it quite often ends in misery – most of us won’t throw ourselves in front of a train, or do whatever crazy shit Heathcliff gets up to in the second half of Wuthering Heights, but Tolstoy and Brontë both hit upon a profound truth: sometimes it really do be like that.

The story of a respectable married woman who embarks on a scandalous affair, Anna Karenina has aged surprisingly well. Tolstoy was a fairly conservative man, even by the standards of 1870s Russia, who believed that a woman’s highest purpose was to be a dutiful wife and mother. But a feminist reading of Anna Karenina isn’t a wild reach: while Anna is the architect of much of her own suffering, she is undone in large part by the misogyny of the society around her, which punishes and shuns her while allowing Count Vronsky, her lover, to go about his life like nothing has happened. More than anything, it’s this injustice which sours their relationship, plunges them into a state of mutual resentment and makes her situation unendurable. While the sections about agricultural reform are sometimes less than thrilling, Anna Karenina is a deeply engrossing, transportive novel, and Anna’s final descent into despair is one of the most upsetting passages of fiction I’ve ever read. Don’t do it, diva!  (JG)

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, HENRY JAMES

If the Gothic elements of Wuthering Heights – the spectral apparitions, the unreliable narration, the transgression, the weather-beaten setting – captivated you the most, then The Turn of the Screw should be your next read. Henry James’ 1898 gothic horror novella follows an unnamed governess who accepts a job tutoring two young siblings at a remote country manor – largely because of her attraction to their uncle, her employer. The children seem angelic at first, but the governess soon starts doubting whether they’re as innocent as they seem: Flora, the younger, appears to have an aptitude for deceit and manipulation, while Miles, the elder, refuses to divulge exactly why he has been expelled from his boarding school, beyond admitting to “saying things” to the boys he “liked”. Then the governess begins seeing visions of two ghosts: Miss Jessel, her predecessor, and Peter Quint, the estate’s former valet, who both died in ignominy after their boundary-crossing affair came to light. But are the children really possessed by their spirits, as the governess begins to suspect, or is she just losing her grip on reality? (SS)

FRANKENSTEIN, MARY SHELLEY

Chances are, you already know the story of Frankenstein. The novel follows the eponymous Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who succeeds in animating a body composed of human remains pilfered from freshly dug graves. Horrified at his creation, Frankenstein abandons the monster, who consequently goes on to seek revenge on his maker. The novel is every bit as gothic as Wuthering Heights: there’s a ‘Chinese box’ narrative structure, madness, vengeance, death…. definitely a book to read if you’re after something which delivers darkness in spades. (SS)

THE HEAT OF THE DAY, ELIZABETH BOWEN

Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day takes place during the Blitz – a perfect setting for febrile love affairs carried out in tense interludes against the dangerous backdrop of blackouts, fires and blanket bombing. Like Wuthering Heights, the central story in The Heat of the Day is a poisonous and impossible love triangle. Here, it revolves around our heroine, Stella Rodney, a glamorous divorcée working in government intelligence, and her lover, Robert Kelway, who remains in London after being injured during the Dunkirk evacuation. The third figure – the agitator – is Harrison, a shadowy interloper and counterspy. During an unsolicited late-night visit to Stella’s Regent’s Park flat, he claims to have evidence that Robert is passing information to the Nazis. Harrison offers not to have Robert arrested and to destroy the evidence of his treason if Stella will be his mistress. What follows is a fraught, noir-esque romance where our trust and mistrust fluctuate, and the stakes – moral and otherwise – are amplified by the perils of wartime.

Tennessee Williams wrote that “death is the opposite of desire”. This is true enough in The Heat of the Day, where, faced with extinction at any moment, Bowen’s Londoners can but choose desire as the only force powerful enough to defy the inexorable inevitability of death. For me, Bowen is the greatest of the Modernist writers, and The Heat of the Day is a darkly glamorous thriller – she’s one of the few novelists I read and underline. (ED)

REBECCA, DAPHNE DU MAURIER

Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca follows an unnamed protagonist who marries the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter after a mere two weeks of courtship. Upon arriving at Mr de Winter’s stately home, Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter begins to doubt her husband’s affections for her – an anxiety fuelled by Manderley’s cantankerous housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, who makes no secret of her unfailing admiration for Mr de Winter’s late first wife, Rebecca. Rebecca, the narrator learns, was a beautiful and charismatic social butterfly, beloved by everyone in her orbit, which only continues to stoke her fear that Mr de Winter regrets their hasty marriage. It soon comes to light that Mr de Winter is keeping secrets from our protagonist – and the truth is far darker than she imagined. (SS)

IF ONLY, VIGDIS HJORTH

When I was younger, I used to find novels about obsessive, self-destructive love affairs kind of romantic; reading If Only, I kept thinking, “girl…if you don’t get yourself to a SLAA meeting!” Sharing little in common with Wuthering Heights beyond the intensity of its central relationship, If Only is a semi-autobiographical account of an affair between Ida, a Norwegian playwright, and Arnold, a middle-aged Brecht scholar (who, balding, pasty and with a terrible taste in clothes, isn’t exactly Jacob Elordi.) 

Neither of them covers themselves in glory – Ida is basically a stalker for the novel’s first quarter – but Arnold is one of the most loathsome characters I’ve ever encountered: a pompous, self-pitying, drunken bore who is abusive, like many abusers, in the most pathetic ways possible. Vigdis Hjorth is an electrifying writer when it comes to interpersonal conflict (see also: Will and Testament) and I was at times so embarrassed and appalled by Arnold’s antics that it made me gasp. And yet, as with Anna Karenina, I’d still classify it as a love story – sometimes love is bad!  (JG)

SIMPLE PASSION AND GETTING LOST, ANNIE ERNAUX

Simple Passion is one of Annie Ernaux’s most famous books. It’s a slight, starkly written memoir – just shy of around 60 pages – recounting the author’s secret love affair with a younger Russian man. It’s beautiful, like any Ernaux, and satisfying in its sparsity. But true passion – with all its mess, abjections, and spiralling, obsessive thinking – can never really be confined to that kind of template. For that, you have to go to Getting Lost, the longer, more uncensored version of events, pulled from her 1988 diaries as the affair was unfolding. There is no stylish restraint here: instead, the author documents her slow descent into lust-driven lunacy, an all-consuming passion that she desperately hopes might “fill that empty space above death”. She is unable to write or focus, lethargic from her own desires; she walks through her life like a zombie, waiting for his call. She writes in detail about their sexual encounters, laying herself bare, and deteriorates as his visits become less frequent. It is “a lovely hell, but hell nonetheless.” 

Getting Lost can be a tough read: the entries are sinuous, often circling back on themselves – the same repeated fears, insecurities, and cries of “it’s over!” – but it’s also comforting, whether you‘ve been in that kind of situation or not. As in so much of her work, Ernaux’s raw vulnerability – and total lack of shame – help you realise that you’ve never been alone, and you’ll always be able to find yourself again. (DS)

THE END OF THE AFFAIR, GRAHAM GREENE 

Trading the rain-lashed moors of Yorkshire for the rain-lashed streets of post-war London, The End of the Affair is another classic of British misery. Loosely inspired by Graham Greene’s own life, it’s about a man, Maurice, who hires a private detective to investigate a married woman he had an affair with, which ended abruptly two years before. It’s a bitter and despairing novel, and I’d hesitate to call it “romantic”, but there’s something kind of delicious about how miserable it is; it captures how dark, gloomy and solemn London can be – especially when the weather is bad – and finds something beautiful in that. It also has one of my favourite ever closing sentences: “I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.” (JG)