Edgar Allan Poe will always be associated with the macabre and mysterious. In this selection of 11 of his short stories Poe's unique voice can be heard in all its Gothic splendour.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" a death obsessed man, in his desperate attempt to save his sister from premature burial, seals his own fate.

"The Masque of the Red Death" A nobleman uses his wealth to protect himself from the Red Death only to find it stalks his palace of pleasure and privilege as a guest.

" The Premature Burial" Fearful that his cataleptic illness may lead to premature interment, the narrator becomes obsessed with avoiding such an horrific end.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" A murderer's frenzied guilt over his deadly deed manifests itself in a bizarre incriminating manner.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" A macabre and violent double murder in Paris attracts the attention of Dupin, an amateur detective whose powers of deduction foreshadow the techniques of Sherlock Holmes nearly 50 years later.

"The Oblong Box" While on a sea voyage the narrator mistakes his old friend's mysterious reticence regarding his cargo of an "Oblong Box" for rudeness, with tragic consequences.

"The Oval Portrait" While convalescing in an old castle, a man becomes intrigued by a portrait of a young woman and soon learns of its sad history.

"The Black Cat" A Man spirals down into an existence of increasing drunkenness and violence. Those he once loved are dragged down with him, but one is bent on revenge.

"The Raven" A short poem in which a Raven enters a lovelorn man's room only to be the unexpected prophet of the poet's bleak and lonely future.

"The Sphinx" The oppressive atmosphere of a Cholera epidemic causes the writer to overestimate the evidence of his own eyes.

"The Pit and the Pendulum" A claustrophobic masterpiece, describing the experience of a man undergoing the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

Classics