Everyone knows Edgar Allan Poe. The author's influence hangs over the gloomier end of culture like marsh gas over a swamp.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue is Dupin's most famous case and the best. The deaths are good and grisly - an old lady decapitated, a corpse shoved up a chimney - and the clues involving window shutters, unusual hair and an unidentified language are brilliantly explained.

The Pit and the Pendulum, about a man imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition, is one of Edgar Allen Poe's finest works and it captures horror at its height.

The Black Cat, short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1843 and included in the collection Tales by Edgar Allen Poe (1845). The story's narrator is an animal lover who, as he descends into alcoholism and perverse violence, begins mistreating his wife and his black cat Pluto.

Other stories in the books: Ms. Found in a Bottle, The Oval Portrait, The Masque Of The Red Death, A Descent Into The Maelström, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask Of Amontıllado, Metzengerstein, The System Of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, A Tale of The Ragged Mountains, The Assignation.