The Poe Shadow

Matthew Pearl

May 2006 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Erik Singer

About this audiobook

INCLUDES MATTHEW PEARL'S EXCLUSIVE AUDIO AFTERWORD ON THE TRUTH BEHIND POE'S DEATH!

Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. Everyone seems to accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end -- except for a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a crusade to salvage Poe's.

As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances and unanswered questions of Poe's demise, he realizes that he must find the one person who can help: the real-life model for Poe's brilliant fictional detective character, C. Augustine Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection. Soon Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving international political agents and the lost secrets of Poe's final hours, and must himself turn master investigator to escape Poe's grisly fate.

Drawing on original, groundbreaking research, the bestselling author of The Dante Club has once again crossed literary history with sublime craftsmanship and devious twists to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense.

About the author

Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante's Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. The Dante Club has been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries around the world. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He can be reached via his website, www.matthewpearl.com.

Erik Singer's theatrical credits include the title role in The Hostage, A Life in the Theatre, Greetings, Stones in His Pockets, national tours of Othello and The Taming of the Shrew, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and The Tempest. TV credits include All My Children and As the World Turns, and the A&E Biography as Vincent Van Gogh. Other audiobooks include The Dogs of Babel, and The Five People You Meet In Heaven.