This hair-raising collection includes eight of Edgar Allan Poe's most ingenious and gripping tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," concerning a most unnerving visit to the home of an old friend; "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the narrator just can't stand the way an old man looks at him; "William Wilson," a haunting allegory about a split personality; "The Murder in the Rue Morgue," the grandfather of all modern detective fiction, featuring a sleuth even cleverer than Sherlock Holmes; and four other riveting stories: "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Gold-Bug," and "The Purloined Letter."Lovers of strange and mind-bending fiction will delight in these classic,spine-tingling tales by one of the great writers of horror fiction.

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) was a wonderfully original writer. Besides the unforgettable horror stories and poetry for which he is most honored today, he is often credited as the father both of science-fiction writing and of the detective story. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot,and a slew of other fictional detectives are direct descendants of Poe"s C. Auguste Dupin, whose brilliant detective work you will read about in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." The eight stories in this volume represent only a smattering of Poe"s literary output. In his short life he wrote more than seventy stories,poetry that was both innovative and wildly popular,and a great mass of incisive, influential criticism.

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Cask of Amontillado

William Wilson

The Gold-Bug

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Purloined Letter