Audiobook

Hop-Frog and his friend Trippetta have been captured by one of the king's generals and brought back to the King as servants. Hop-Frog serves as jester to the king and Trippetta helps to plan and decorate for social events. She is also forced to dance for the king and his court. Both Hop-Frog and Trippetta are dwarves. The King and his ministers enjoy laughing at and abusing Hop-Frog. Even his name is the result of their making fun of the way he walks. When the abuse becomes unbearable, Hop-Frog devises and carries out an ingenious but horrific plan of revenge upon the King and his ministers.

In this story of artistic obsession, a wounded man finds shelter in an abandoned château in the Appenines and with his valet settles into a small apartment in a remote turret. The oddly shaped room is full of paintings, and on his pillow the man finds a small book that appears to tell their stories. One painting in particular, of a beautiful girl, holds him spellbound, and, consulting the history book, he learns the startling secret of the oval portrait’s extraordinary execution. A pioneer of the short story genre, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories typically captured themes of the macabre and included elements of the mysterious. His better-known stories include “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

A man confronts himself and an unknown listener with his desire to murder an old man. In this classic psychological thriller, the reader will find many more questions than answers. Even though this is one of Poe's shortest stories, nevertheless it has become one of his most highest regarded works. It is a profound and, at times, ambiguous investigation of the paranoia that may lie within the depths of one man's mind...

The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his large converted abbey home. He and many other wealthy nobles, hold a masquerade ball using seven rooms in the abbey, each decorated with a different color. The last one is velvet black. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. The story follows many traditions of Gothic fiction and is often analyzed as an allegory about the inevitability of death, though some critics advise against an allegorical reading. Many different interpretations have been presented, as well as attempts to identify the true nature of the titular disease. Librarian's note: this entry relates to the story "The Masque of the Red Death." Collections of short stories by the author can be found elsewhere on Goodreads.

"William Wilson" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years outside of London. The tale follows the theme of the doppelgänger.