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Stories for Halloween

Stories for Halloween

Summary

The midnight hour approaches. You lie in bed and try to sleep, but there is the howling of the wind outside, the creak of a floorboard, the scream of a cat, the ticking clock...

Your heart beats, your skin crawls, and despite yourself you reach for this book and enter a world like a nightmare, haunted by dark fears, guilty secrets and the bloody consequences of rage, revenge and obsession.

You cannot tear yourself away, these tales will appall and yet enthrall you, for no mere mortal can resist the master of Gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe.

Reviews

  • For their supernatural grotesquerie and graveyard doom,[Poe's stories] foreshadow Stephen King and the "southern gothic" of Truman Capote... his work continues to enthral. His greatest tales radiate a dark humour and mockery that strike an oddly modern note.
    Sunday Times

About the author

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was born in Boston and orphaned at an early age. Taken in by a couple from Richmond, Virginia, he spent a semester at the University of Virginia but could not afford to stay longer. After joining the Army and matriculating as a cadet, he started his literary career with the anonymous publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems, before working as a literary critic. His life was dotted with scandals, such as purposefully getting himself court-martialled to ensure dismissal from the Army, being discharged from his job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond after being found drunk by his boss, and secretly marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia (listed twenty-one on the marriage certificate). His work took him to both New York City and Baltimore, where he died at the age of forty, two years after Virginia.
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