Introduction: The bill of sale: gothic, property, slavery, and the South
Chapter one: From damsels to specters in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the life of a slave girl and Hannah Crafts's The bondwoman's narrative
Chapter two: Playing con games in Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, and Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose
Chapter three: Specters on staircases in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
Chapter four: Claiming, killing, and haunting in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Chapter five: Claiming the property of history in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Natasha Trethewey's Native guard
Epilogue: What the gothic can do
Notes
Works cited
Index.