The Monkey's Paw

A young governess takes charge of two children in an isolated country house and begins to see figures that may or may not be there. James leaves every reading of the story in the reader's hands, including the worst one.

Henry James

A woman is confined to a single room for the good of her nerves and watches the pattern on the walls until it watches back. A short, devastating account of a mind taken apart by the cure that was meant to save it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A confession from a narrator who insists, again and again, that he is sane. Poe compresses guilt, paranoia and the failure of self-knowledge into a few unforgettable pages.

Edgar Allan Poe

A man tells how a household pet came to mark him for ruin, and how he kept choosing the worse path each time it was offered. Poe at his most pitiless about cruelty rationalised.

Edgar Allan Poe

A friend visits the last heirs of a dying line, in a house that seems to share their illness. Poe binds setting, family and disease so tightly that none can fall without bringing the others down.

Edgar Allan Poe