"The Oval Portrait." Edgar Allen Poe

One-minute review: Narrator is wounded. He and his valet seek shelter in an abandoned house. Comes upon a series of paintings and a book discussing them. One portrait is especially interesting because it is so life like, a portrait of the artist’s wife. He had painted her to the life and in doing so, he had sucked the life from her. She was dead.

75 Short Masterpieces: Stories from the World’s Literature. Ed. Roger B. Goodman. New York: Bantam Books. 1961. These summaries do not do justice to the vividness of the stories. RayS.