Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

For years, Dr. Victor Frankenstein labors to create a new race of intelligent beings. He spends his nights scavenging body parts from graveyards, slaughterhouses, and hospital dissection rooms. By day he experiments in his secret laboratory, perfecting the creature who, he believes, will worship him as a god. But when he succeeds, Frankenstein is horrified by the ugly brutishness of the patchwork being he has brought to life and abandons his creation. The novel that translated the stormy ethos of the gothic novel into the foundation for modern science fiction, Frankenstein is a terrifying story about how monsters of all kinds are made.