Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Raven Edition, Volume 2 (version 2)

This second volume of Poe's collected works gathers the stories and poems that defined the American Gothic. Here lies 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' with its maddening heartbeat beneath the floorboards. Here is 'The Masque of the Red Death,' where Prince Prospero seals himself away from plague, only to find death dancing in his mirrored halls. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' shudders through its decaying mansion, and 'The Pit and the Pendulum' tortures a prisoner in the Spanish Inquisition. Also included: 'The Black Cat,' 'The Premature Burial,' and those impossible detective stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin, the armchair sleuth who invented an entire genre. Poe's poetry burns through as well: 'The City in the Sea,' 'The Haunted Palace,' and the immortal 'The Raven.' This is Poe at his most operatic, his most delirious, his most undeniable. He writes about death, madness, and the thing behind the wallpaper, and somehow makes you feel the walls closing in.