The Man Who Was Poe

This heart-stopping historical mystery from plot-master Avi will reach the wide audience it deserves with its fresh and compelling new cover treatment!The night Edmund's twin sister, Sis, goes missing, the streets of nineteenth-century Providence, Rhode Island, are filled with menacing shadows. As Edmund frantically searches the city, he tries to make sense of what happened: He only left Sis alone long enough to buy bread. How did she vanish in the mere minutes he was gone? Just as Edmund is about to lose hope of finding her, a stranger appears out of the mist and offers to help. But the man is gloomy and full of secrets. He seems to need Edmund to carry out plans of his own. Can Edmund trust him? And if he doesn't take the chance, how will he ever find his sister?

"The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", a story by Edgar Allan Poe, recounts the adventure of Pym, who embarks clandestinely on a whaler. After a mutiny and various adversities, including cannibalism and natural disasters, the story culminates in a mysterious and inconclusive encounter at the South Pole.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" is a short story that explores themes of guilt and perversity. The narrator, haunted by cruelty to his black cat and acts of domestic violence, is consumed by paranoia and madness. His attempt to conceal a crime leads to his own disgrace.

Edgar Allan Poe, one of the great American writers, died a mysterious death in 1849. This is the story of the two men of bibilical renown whose blood feud brought about Edgar's death. Caught in a centuries-old blood feud between the men, Edgar faces a terror that could have come from one of his stories.

In "The Man of the Crowd" by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator becomes obsessed with following a mysterious old man through the bustling streets of London, intrigued by his enigmatic presence. This pursuit reveals the complexity of human nature and the impenetrability of urban anonymity.

“I present to you . . . the truth about this man’s death and my life.” Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s. As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration strikes Quentin–in the form of Poe’s own stories. The young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection. In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s. Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research–featuring documented material never published before–opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and devious twists, does honor to Poe himself

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator tries to prove his sanity after murdering an elderly man because of his "vulture eye". His growing guilt leads him to hear the old man's heart beating under the floorboards, which drives him to confess the crime to the police.