The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe

Contrasting to meandering, overwritten horror classics such as Shelley's Frankenstein, Poe proves with The Tell-Tale Heart that length-requiring plot and character development is unnecessary when you have the capacity to unsettle your audience by atmosphere creation and the building of tension delivered with exceptionally tight and stylized prose. Brilliantly constructed and viscerally unsettling, Heart represents the strength of the short story as a medium and lives on as one of the foremost examples of the unreliable narrator in horror fiction.

One of Poe's best. I'll probably re-read this one each October until I die.

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