Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

Maeve writes:
For my independent reading book this quarter, I am reading Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I am enjoying it immensely. I am not very far into the book yet, but I hope to progress much further in the next weeks.
The novel so far has been narrated by the main character, Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, in the form of his journal. The story begins with Harker’s traveling to Transylvania, where he plans to meet with the count, Dracula, who owns a large castle there and presides over the surrounding land. Harker meets very peculiar behavior when he tells the locals where he is going. They keep crossing their chest and making a sign to ward off the evil eye. He can make neither heads nor tails of this strange behavior, but accepts a rosary with a cross from the woman who owns the inn where he is staying. He thinks nothing of it at the time, but is later very glad to have it. After a terrifying carriage ride involving wolves and strange blue fires in the night, he arrives at the Count’s castle. Dracula has all the makings of your classic vampire. Red lips with protruding fangs, pale skin – the whole shebang. At the time, Harker thinks this is just peculiar and rather likes the Count. However, as time progresses, Harker begins to get suspicious. For one thing, the Count never dines with him and always leaves come morning. Harker begins living a nocturnal lifestyle, as night is the only time he can talk to the Count. As he is there on the business of selling the Count a house in the English countryside, this is necessary.
After Harker has a startling series of adventures involving forbidden rooms in the castle and seeing the Count crawl like a spider down the castle wall, returning with a large bag (containing a child which is shortly after killed), he begins to get seriously alarmed. He writes that he is a prisoner, and that the Count plans to kill him (which, from all points, seems to be the case). The Count realizes that Harker is getting suspicious and locks him in his room for long periods of time and takes away almost everything he owns.
When Harker discovers that where the Count really goes during the day is down to the castle basement and into a coffin where he sleeps until the night comes again, he plans his escape. After a group of men come and take the coffin away (after Harker has a near brush with the Count involving a shovel), Harker decides to scale the castle wall with some gold in his pockets and strikes out for home. His journal entry ends with a farewell to his beloved Mina.