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"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities. The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his childhood friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country, complaining of an illness and asking for his help.

"Eleonora" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1842 in Philadelphia in the literary annual The Gift. It is often regarded as somewhat autobiographical and has a relatively "happy" ending. The story follows an unnamed narrator who lives with his cousin and aunt in "The Valley of the Many-Colored Grass", an idyllic paradise full of fragrant flowers, fantastic trees, and a "River of Silence". It remains untrodden by the footsteps of strangers and so they live isolated but happy.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering the body in the bathtub and hiding it under the floorboards.

Both by calling and conviction Father Brown knew better than most of us that every man is dignified when he is dead. But even he felt a pang of incongruity when he was knocked up at daybreak and told that Sir Aaron Armstrong had been murdered. There was something absurd and unseemly about secret violence in connection with so entirely entertaining and popular a figure. For Sir Aaron Armstrong was entertaining to the point of being comic; and popular in such a manner as to be almost legendary.

The Duel of Dr. Hirsch is a short story by Gilbert Keith Chesterton: M. Maurice Brun and M. Armand Armagnac were crossing the sunlit Champs Élysées with a kind of vivacious respectability. They were both short, brisk and bold. They both had black beards that did not seem to belong to their faces, after the strange French fashion which makes real hair look like artificial. They were both young. They were both atheists, with a depressing fixity of outlook but great mobility of exposition.

A stormy evening of olive and silver was closing in, as Father Brown, wrapped in a grey Scotch plaid, came to the end of a grey Scotch valley and beheld the strange castle of Glengyle. It stopped one end of the glen or hollow like a blind alley; and it looked like the end of the world. Rising in steep roofs and spires of sea-green slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch chateaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens.

The Absence of Mr Glass: "But What about the two voices?" asked Maggie, staring. - "Have you never heard a ventriloquist?" asked Father Brown. "Don't you know they speak first in their natural voice, and then answer themselves in just that shrill, squeaky, unnatural voice that you heard?" - There was a long silence, and Dr Hood regarded the little man who had spoken with a dark and attentive smile. "You are certainly a very ingenious person," he said; "it could not have been done better in a book.

"The Premature Burial" is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844 in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. Its main character expresses fear about being buried alive. This fear was common in this period and Poe was taking advantage of the public interest. In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy", a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive.

"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. An unnamed narrator suffering with alcoholism has a strong affection for pets, until he perversely turns to abusing them. In a drunken rage, he hangs his beloved black cat from a tree. He soon finds another black cat but develops a hatred for it as well. When he attempts to kill it with an axe, his wife stops him – and the narrator murders her instead, concealing the body behind a brick wall. But the cat, accidentally walled in with the corpse, alerts the police with its shrieking cry.

In "The Assignation" — we have the most romantic story Poe ever wrote. A discerning critic well said that it is "such a mixture of bitter and sweet that it clings to one's memory like a ballad. The characters are sharply and consistently drawn, motives clear and convincing the more incredible the action grows.

"The Purloined Letter" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. The unnamed narrator is with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin when they are joined by G—, prefect of the Paris police.

"Morella" is a short story in the Gothic horror genre by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. An unnamed narrator, deeply affected by his friend Morella, marries her despite not feeling romantic love, drawn instead by an indefinable, intense connection. Morella, a reclusive and profoundly erudite woman, immerses him in her mystical studies, particularly German metaphysical texts on identity, pantheism, and reincarnation. Over time, the narrator grows disturbed by her eerie presence, her cold touch, and her otherworldly voice, which shift his joy into horror.

Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession—an unprofitable and disreputable tribe.

About twelve o'clock, one sultry night, in the month of August, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London — which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar.

"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man's estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime.

Two men appeared simultaneously at the two ends of a sort of passage running along the side of the Apollo Theatre in the Adelphi. The evening daylight in the streets was large and luminous, opalescent and empty. The passage was comparatively long and dark, so each man could see the other as a mere black silhouette at the other end. Nevertheless, each man knew the other, even in that inky outline; for they were both men of striking appearance and they hated each other.

Certain of the great roads going north out of London continue far into the country a sort of attenuated and interrupted spectre of a street, with great gaps in the building, but preserving the line. Here will be a group of shops, followed by a fenced field or paddock, and then a famous public-house, and then perhaps a market garden or a nursery garden, and then one large private house, and then another field and another inn, and so on.

"Ligeia" is an early short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She falls ill, composes "The Conqueror Worm", and quotes lines attributed to Joseph Glanvill shortly before dying. After her death, the narrator marries the Lady Rowena. Rowena becomes ill, and she dies as well. The distraught narrator stays with her body overnight and watches as Rowena slowly comes back from the dead – though she has transformed into Ligeia.

"The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). It was published in the February 1845 issue of Godey's Lady's Book and was intended as a partly humorous sequel to the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern tales One Thousand and One Nights. The tale depicts the eighth and final voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, along with the various mysteries Sinbad and his crew encounter; the anomalies are then described as footnotes to the story.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, written and published in 1838, is the only complete novel by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The novel is set between 1827 and 1828 and relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaler called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures farther south.