Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Edgar Poe

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Margaret Naudi.

The human mind is a dark, bottomless pit, and sometimes it works in strange and frightening ways. That sound in the night… is it a door banging in the wind, or a murdered man knocking inside his coffin? The face in the mirror… is it yours, or the face of someone standing behind you, who is never there when you turn round?

These famous short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, that master of horror, explore the dark world of the imagination, where the dead live and speak, where fear lies in every shadow of the mind…

Edgar Allan Poe

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION

Imagine you are in an old house by a lake. It is night and there is a wild storm outside, the wind screaming around the grey stone walls. Far below the house, in a gloomy vault, lies the dead body of the Lady Madeleine in her coffin. In the room with you is her brother, looking at you with wild, mad eyes. Imagine this … and you are in the House of Usher.

Turn the page, and a Black Cat is hanging by its neck from a tree. Turn another, and you will hear music as a thousand people sing and dance at a wonderful masked ball. You are now in the castle of Prince Prospero. Inside, all is light and life and pleasure, but outside the castle walls walks the terrible masked figure of the Red Death …

These stories will take you into the shadowy world of the imagination, into a land of terror and dreams and madness.

Don’t read them alone!

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First published in Oxford Bookworms 1993

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ISBN 978 0 19 479132 8

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479103 8

Printed in Hong Kong

Typeset by Wyvern Typesetting Ltd, Bristol

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrated by: Ian Miller

Word count (main text): 11,960 words

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e-Book first published 2012

The Fall of the House of Usher

It was a grey autumn day and the sky was full of large black clouds. All day I