"For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable...

Contains 73 of Poe's short stories and 48 poems including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Purloined Letter, The Tell-tale Heart, The Raven and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.