‘Edgar Allan Poe is that most classical of American writers – a writer more peculiarly attuned to our new century's heartbeat than he ever was to his own’ – Lou Reed

The five tales collected here range from the famous to the obscure, but each displays Poe's unique sense of the macabre and his love for the baroque. A victim of the Inquisition finds himself in a nightmarish torture chamber, a castle is besieged by plague, a man becomes obsessed by the evil eye of his fellow lodger, a mesmerist suspends a man's life at the point of death and a jester takes his revenge on his cruel employers.

STORIES: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar and Hop-Frog

BONUS MATERIAL: Sick Unto Death, Prospero's Masque and My Last Jest - three incidental music suites by Howard Carter.