The Raven (an excerpt)

While  entertaining an avian visitor one December evening, a man burdened by sorrow and grief seeks definitive truths from the mysterious creature who can only offer one ominous answer. Become immersed in Poe's tale of lost love and supernatural haunting.

 

 

 

 

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The Tell-Tale Heart

Poe, the master of the macabre, presents a story of the irrational hatred and fear of a psychopathic mind. A wildly disturbed personality commits the “perfect” crime only to be undone by the workings of a fevered imagination.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Fantasy and reality are cleverly combined in this entertaining story from the pen of Washington Irving.  This fanciful yarn relates the hilarious misfortunes of the great, gangling schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, and his fateful midnight rendezvous with the legendary Headless Horseman!

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The Monkey’s Paw

One of the best stories ever written on the theme of being granted three wishes.  W.W. Jacobs explores the belief that fate rules people’s lives and that those who tamper with it do so to their sorrow.  In this tale, the sequence and consequences of the three wishes are deeply tragic.

 

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The Necklace

With telling irony, Maupassant offers a dark jewel of a tale.  Mathilde Loisel dreams of the finer things in life and is not content with her secure, middle-class home.  The price she pays for a single evening of elegance is a lifetime of drudgery and despair.  This poignant story is staged with touching symbolism.

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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

This is perhaps the best known of all Twain’s tales.  It is a good, old-fashioned yarn which typifies the brawling, risk-taking, highly competitive society that was frontier America in the nineteenth century.  The resilient Jim Smiley and his champion frog, Daniel Webster, are among the most memorable and endearing of Twain’s creations.

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