Story alternates between the perspective of two mothers, Marie and Callie, whose sons have behavioral disorders.
The story takes place in a Californian community known as Poker Flat, near the town of La Porte. Poker Flat is, in the opinions of many, on a downward slope. The town has lost thousands of dollars, and has experienced a moral decline. In an effort to save what is left of the town and reestablish it as a "virtuous" place, a secret society is created to decide whom to exile and whom to kill. On November 23rd of 1850, four "immoral" individuals are exiled from Poker Flat. The first of them is a professional poker player, John Oakhurst. He is among those sent away because of his great success in winning from those on the secret committee. On his way out of town, he is joined by The Duchess, a saloon girl; Mother Shipton, a madam; and Uncle Billy, the town drunk and a suspected robber. These four set out for a camp which is a day's journey away, over a mountain range. Once halfway there, all exiles other than Oakhurst decide to stop at noon for a rest, against Oakhurst's wishes....
It is relayed by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity while simultaneously describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, and he hides the body by dismembering it, and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's feelings of guilt, or a mental disturbance, result in him hearing a thumping sound, which he interprets as the dead man's beating heart. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is widely considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and is one of Poe's most famous short stories.
The story begins at dusk in Salem Village, Massachusetts as young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his wife of three months, for some unknown errand in the forest. Faith pleads with her husband to stay with her, but he insists that the journey must be completed that night. In the forest he meets an older man, dressed in a similar manner and bearing a physical resemblance to himself. The man carries a black serpent-shaped staff. Deeper in the woods, the two encounter Goody Cloyse, an older woman, whom Young Goodman had known as a boy and who had taught him his catechism. Cloyse complains about the need to walk; the older man throws his staff on the ground for the woman and quickly leaves with Brown.
The short story “Paul’s Case†is about a young man who struggles to fit in at home, school and in the world. At the start of the story, Paul is suspended from his high school in Pittsburgh for a week. He meets with his principal and teachers who complain about Paul's "defiant manner" in class and the "physical aversion" he exhibits toward his teachers. One of Paul's teachers also mentions that Paul's mother died back when he was a child in Colorado which later is shown to be of importance. He then goes to work at a music hall in Pittsburgh, named Carnegie Hall. Here he enjoys donning his uniform and performing his job as an usher with enthusiasm as if he were the host of a grand social event. He stays for the concert and enjoys the social scene, while losing himself in the music. After the concert, Paul follows the soloist and imagines life inside her hotel room
The story, like "The Cask of Amontillado", is one of Poe's revenge tales, in which a murderer apparently escapes without punishment. In "The Cask of Amontillado", the victim wears motley; in "Hop-Frog", the murderer also dons such attire. However, while "The Cask of Amontillado" is told from the murderer's point of view, "Hop-Frog" is told from an unidentified third-person narrator's point of view. The grating of Hop-Frog's teeth, right after Hop-Frog witnesses the king splash wine in Trippetta's face, and again just before Hop-Frog sets the eight men on fire, may well be symbolic. Poe often used teeth as a sign of mortality, as with the lips writhing about the teeth of the mesmerized man in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" or the obsession with teeth in "Berenice"
On a cold December day, an elderly woman named Phoenix Jackson makes her way along a remote path, narrating the journey to herself as she goes. She traverses different kinds of terrain—hills, forests, swamps, and fields—that test the strength and endurance of her old body. She encounters animals and people along her way, too. Some of these are real; others are daydreams, memories, or tricks of the eye. One of these animals, a black dog, bowls her over, leaving her lying in a ditch for a while until a hunter, a young white man with a dog of his own chained by his side, stops to help her up. The hunter and Phoenix chat, mostly about her age and where she is going, which makes him seem nice enough, but he's really pretty much a jerk. He sets his own dog off to attack the black dog, and he points his gun directly at Phoenix, which he thinks is really funny. As the two part ways, the hunter advises Phoenix to go home, but she insists on continuing her journey.
The story is based on a true incident regarding Fitzgerald, his daughter Scottie, his sister-in-law Rosalind and her husband Newman Smith (a banker based in Belgium, who as a colonel in the U.S. Army in World War II would be in charge of worldwide strategic deception for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), on whom Marion and Lincoln Peters are based. Rosalind and Newman had not been able financially to live as well as Scott and Zelda had lived during the 1920s, and they had always regarded Scott as an irresponsible drunkard whose obsession with high living was responsible for Zelda's mental problems. When Zelda suffered a breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium in Switzerland, Rosalind felt that Scott was unfit to raise their daughter and that Rosalind and Newman should adopt her.
