The fate of the Usher ancestral home rests on the heads of Roderick and Madeline Usher—siblings afflicted with psychological illnesses that will prove to be their undoing. A master of the mysterious and the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe's short stories explore the human psyche. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered to be one of the author's most famous works, and is a masterpiece of American Gothic literature.
