Adriana Calcanhotto Knihy

From the mad imagination of 19th-century gothic master of horror and suspense Edgar Allan Poe comes this deliciously gripping CD from the acclaimed Selected Shorts series that will leave listeners breathless and happily terrified. The creepy, breathtaking, and soulful classic tales include: “The Masque of the Red Death,” the terrifying and ironic story of a nobleman who attempts to seal himself and his friends away from a terrible plague raging outside, performed by Fionnula Flanagan; “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a hair-raising, first-person account of a man in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, performed to a fare-thee-well by Stephen Lang; “The Black Cat,” in which a man’s dead pet comes back to haunt him, performed by Tony Award–winner Rene Auberjonois. Plus there are dreamy, mesmerizing, and haunting readings of Poe’s wonderfully atmospheric best-loved poems, “The Bells,” “The Raven,” and “Annabel Lee.”

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Van Leer Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of horror and detective fiction. As well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Using the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence, Poe is less interested in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem 'mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular — 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Masque of the Red Death', 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and 'The Purloined Letter ' — alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires. • INTRODUCTION • TEXTUAL NOTE • BIBLIOGRAPHY • CHRONOLOGY • EXPLANATORY NOTES --back cover