About this item
Feel the breathtaking tingle of suspense. Share the captivating horror of the supernatural in these six complete stories presented by a masterful reader.This audio recording includes: A Watcher by the Dead by Ambrose BierceA corpse brings death, dereliction, and madness to those who would play with it. The Body-Snatchers by Robert Louis StevensonA never-ending demand for bodies for medical dissection delivers nightly horrors. Adventure of the German Student by Washington IrvingA German student, caught up in the tempestuous times of the French Revolution, is intoxicated by the beauty of a stranger, and pledges himself to her forever. Dick on the Devil by J. Sheridan Le FanuBarwyke Hall, isolated and sinister, is haunted by both the living and the dead.
About the Author
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as , and . This versatile writer's oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America's first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe's reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry. Just as the bizarre characters in Poe's stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author's name. The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe's sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls' school. Within three years of Poe's birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe's siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe's handwriting on the backs of Allan's ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. For more information, please see
