The bloody-minded Montresor leads the pompous Fortunato deep into the catacombs, seeking the famed Amontillado wine. Here we have one of Poe’s most terrifying, and most “beloved” tales. Revenge and pomposity commingle beneath the river’s bed, leading to a delightfully sinister conclusion.

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

“I was sick, sick unto death with that long agony,” begins one of the most famous tales from the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. Through the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, we follow the straying mind of the unnamed prisoner in his quest for hope in a world of darkness and despair. This episode skyrocketed The Classic Tales Podcast to number 3 on iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts chart.

It was the eye. The dull, sightless, vulture's eye that shredded his final nerve. But the murder was done so carefully, so perfectly, that only one thing could reveal the whereabouts of the body. B. J. Harrison gives a masterful reading of the famous murder that wouldn't keep quiet. This audiobook was the #3 best-selling audiobook in 2008 at the iTunes Music Store!

This volume features William F Harvey's original undead hand story "The Beast with Five Fingers" that sparked many movies including Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead". Poe's classic "The Tell Tale Heart" is joined by Lovecraft's creepy tale of alienation "The Outsider", and a chilling Dickens ghost story "The Signalman".

Kate Chopin's brilliant short story about an hour in the life of a young wife. When news arrives that Louise's husband has been killed in a railroad accident, her family and friends are careful to break it to her gently, knowing that she has a heart condition. Louise locks herself in her room for an hour, during which she realizes that this bereavement is the start of a new life of freedom and independence. But a much greater shock awaits her when she leaves her room and goes downstairs....

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

The grand-prize winner of a writing contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, "The Gold-Bug" was one of Poe's most popular stories during his lifetime. Similar to his ratiocination tales - early versions of what we now call detective fiction - "The Gold-Bug" is full of mystery and adventure and includes a cryptogram, invisible ink, a scarab-like bug, and pirate treasure.

How long would you walk, if the Devil sauntered up to you of an evening, and journeyed alongside of you? Young Goodman Brown is led by the Devil to a midnight ritual, where fire, blood, and water change his opinions of the nature of humanity.

A mysterious island, shrouded in fear, evil, and darkness. Here the amoral General Zaroff hunts. And what, you ask, is the most dangerous game? It is the manner and substance of his nightly killings.

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

This is a story from the "Great Ghost Stories" collection.

Written by H.G. Wells, the great visionary author, this legendary novel is both timeless and thought provoking. Listeners will thrill to this chilling masterpiece as man boldly takes evolution into his own hands for the first time. Dr. Moreau, a scientist expelled from his homeland for his cruel experiments, continues his transplantations on a small South Pacific island, creating hideous creatures with manlike intelligence.

Madame Mathilde Loisel is sure she was meant to be an aristocrat, but she was born into a middle-class family and married off to a middle-class clerk. When her husband procures them invitations to a high-society party, Loisel goes all out to impress. She borrows a diamond necklace from a wealthy acquaintance and has the time of her life - until the necklace goes missing. In “The Necklace”, de Maupassant showcases his signature twists of fate and social commentary in a story that will leave you speechless.

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, perhaps the first recognizably modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and winegrower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them essays, meaning “attempts” or “tries.” He put whatever was in his head into them: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog’s ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the religious wars....

The best and most revered works of famed poet and author, Edgar Allen Poe.

This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

The house on Benefit Street is shunned. With a dark forbidding exterior, a garden overrun by corrupt weeds and bent malformed trees, it simply looks wrong. The locals know its history, know how many people that house has killed, and fear it. Dr Elihu Whipple is not afraid of the house, he's fascinated by it and its history, and now he's decided to investigate its horrifying secret.

Young, impressionable Aubrey is fascinated by the enigmatic Lord Ruthven, and accompanies him on a tour to Europe. But Aubrey develops a growing distaste for Lord Ruthven’s sinister and grotesque conduct - especially as it concerns human blood. This novella, penned during that tempestuous night in Switzerland amongst such notables as Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, served as the great inspiration for Bram Stoker to create Dracula.

Narrator Dan Stevens ( Downton Abbey) presents an uncanny performance of Mary Shelley's timeless gothic novel, an epic battle between man and monster at its greatest literary pitch. In trying to create life, the young student Victor Frankenstein unleashes forces beyond his control, setting into motion a long and tragic chain of events that brings Victor to the very brink of madness. How he tries to destroy his creation, as it destroys everything Victor loves, is a powerful story of love, friendship, scientific hubris, and horror.

In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early 19th century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism.

On the Natural History of Destruction is W.G. Sebald's harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined "silences" of our time. In it, the acclaimed novelist examines the devastation of German cities by Allied bombardment, and the reasons for the astonishing absence of this unprecedented trauma from German history and culture. This void in history is in part a repression of things - such as the death by fire of the city of Hamburg at the hands of the RAF - too terrible to bear.

An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.

This volume features William F Harvey's original undead hand story "The Beast with Five Fingers" that sparked many movies including Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead". Poe's classic "The Tell Tale Heart" is joined by Lovecraft's creepy tale of alienation "The Outsider", and a chilling Dickens ghost story "The Signalman".

A prisoner, sentenced to death during the Spanish Inquisition, finds himself trapped in a lightless cell to contemplate his fate. Will he die by falling helplessly into a deathly, yawning pit in the center of the room? Or will the deadly, razor-sharp pendulum slowly descending from the ceiling be the cause of his demise? This enhanced audiobook - with music and sound effects - is an unabridged copy of the classic story by the master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe.

Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution.

William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.

In the late seventies an extraordinary document came to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better known to devotees of Conan Doyle as Dr Watson. A continuous narrative in the doctor’s own hand, the story opens in the East End of London in 1888. Three women have been savagely murdered by Jack the Ripper.

Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures... until the day their adventures turn all too real. They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor's curiosity more. When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library....