Edgar Allan Poe's stories are some of the most fascinating in the canon of American literature. Such classics as "The Tell-Tale Heart" are taught in schools all over the country and are loved by readers for the insight he offers into the paranoid mind. More than that, Poe's intricate detail of the protagonist's thought patterns make even the most insane-seeming character - truly a murderer - somehow relatable to the reader, even if those of us on the sane side would never consider such an act. Poe stands among the best of American storytellers. He is widely known to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, and is one of the earliest writers of short stories.