The Monkey's Paw

A nervous narrator insists on his sanity while confessing the murder of an old man whose vulture-like eye obsessed him. Poe at his most concentrated, building dread through obsessive repetition and the sound of a heart that refuses to stop beating.

Edgar Allan Poe

Montresor lures his rival Fortunato into the wine cellar of his palazzo on the pretext of authenticating a cask of sherry. One of Poe's coldest tales of revenge, told entirely in the murderer's calm voice as he walls his victim into the catacombs.

Edgar Allan Poe

A man descends into alcoholism and cruelty, turning on the black cat he once loved and on the wife who tries to protect it. Poe builds a study of guilt and perversity that ends with a wall, a corpse, and a single revealing sound.

Edgar Allan Poe

Prince Prospero locks a thousand revelers inside his abbey to escape the plague ravaging the country, then throws a masquerade in seven colored rooms. Poe's allegory of mortality builds to the appearance of an uninvited guest whose costume is the disease itself.

Edgar Allan Poe