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Books for The Fall of the House of Usher fans
42
items After decades of decadence without consequence, Roderick Usher’s family tree brutally perishes one by one, with each of his children and descendants paying the ultimate price for his sins.
Sections
6
The Storyline Explained
Biggest WTF Questions and Ending Explained
Poe's Story in Each Episodes
Edgar Allan Poe
Arthur Gordon Pym & Transglobe Expedition Explained
Books to Read After Watching Netflix’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’
The Storyline Explained
This house, this carcass of a house, this is our tomb.
In the show’s more contemporary moments, the narrative focuses on the Usher family and their influence over the world through their Big Pharma company and its leading painkiller drug, Ligodone. The show opens with the Usher family company, Fortunato,...
Similarities to Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family
Verna’s curious presence in the Usher’s lives continues to be the biggest mystery haunting the narrative. With each sibling’s death, Verna’s interference in the matter increases, and she starts showing unnatural colors. As a result, everything change...
Who is Verna?
The death of every single Usher family member was the result of a deal that Verna made with young Roderick and Madeline Usher on New Year’s Eve 1979. After Roderick and Madeline killed his boss Rufus Griswold in order to rise up at Fortunato, the twi...
Why Everyone Died In The Usher Family: Roderick And Madeline Damned Their Descendants For Personal Gain
Just before his childhood home cracks and caves in on top of him, Roderick utters the word “nevermore.” This line is famously associated with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” as the word is repeatedly said by the titular bird as a way to taunt the...
Roderick Usher's Final Line Explained: "Nevermore"
In The Fall of the House of Usher’s ending, Auggie visits the Usher family’s gravestones to inform them what became of the world after their departure: Auggie retired, Juno stopped taking Fortunato's Ligodone drug and inherited Roderick’s fortune, Fo...
Verna's "Spirit Of The Dead" Poem Explained
The meaning of The Fall of the House of Usher warns against the traps of power, the sins of pride and greed, and the tragedies that often befall families. Roderick Usher sold his family – at a time when they were all innocent – for wealth, power, and...
What's The Meaning Of The Fall Of The House Of Usher?
Biggest WTF Questions and Ending Explained
In Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher, we see a whole rotten foundation that crumbles as Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) watches on.
“You’re a collection of impeccable, elaborate masks in orbit of a stunted heart.” Not only do the algorithms and AI tie into The Fall of the House of Usher’s overarching theme of chasing eternal life, they also pay homage to a popular trick Poe liked...
Who Is Madeline Usher? What’s the Deal with the Algorithms?
The survivors of the curse that Roderick Usher brought upon himself and his family each find themselves with a fitting end, even if that end is harder than they may have deserved. Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill) ends up being a lowkey MVP of the series by t...
Who Survived the Fall of the House of Usher?
Despite the series setting up precedent for this in its very first episode with the death of Roderick and Madeline’s mother, this one is still a bit of a head scratcher if you look at it from a mortal point of view. Roderick poisons Madeline in the s...
How Did Madeline Usher Come Back To Life?
“I’m sorry I couldn’t accept your resignation.” Roderick Usher may have gone down as the king of salesmen, but there are no loopholes in deals with death. Especially when Death’s got a little bit of a soft spot for some humans — she finds them intere...
Why Wouldn’t Verna Let Roderick Usher Die By Suicide?
The sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore, the only decent member of the Usher family, gone with the rest of the spoiled bunch. Of course, in the poem, it is the raven that continues to squawk “nevermore.” Here, though, Flanagan and company seem...
Why Did Lenore Keep Texting Roderick “Nevermore”?
Poe's Story in Each Episodes
As you've probably already noticed, Mike Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher is jam-packed full of Edgar Allen Poe references. But as well as the Usher children being named after Poe characters, each episode of the show is also largely based on...
Live burial and people rising from their graves is a theme in Poe's short stories. Although there isn't one particular story that closely resembles the plot of "A Midnight Dreary" — it's taken from the opening lines of "The Raven" and that's a whole ...
Episode 1, "A Midnight Dreary"
Just like in the episode, Poe's short story of the same name features a party thrown by a character called Prospero (played in the series by Sauriyan Sapkota) which is crashed by a mysterious masked figure. The only real difference? Instead of conten...
Episode 2, "The Masque of the Red Death"
There are quite a few differences between the plot of this episode and the short story it takes its name from, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", but both have one key thing in common: killer primates. In the tale, Poe's great detective C. Auguste Dupi...
Episode 3, "Murder in the Rue Morgue"
Like "The Masque of the Red Death", this one also follows its source material more closely than most. Both feature a protagonist gradually losing their grip on reality, both contain the haunting image of a body hidden in the walls, and both revolve a...
Episode 4, "The Black Cat"
Like episode 3, "Murder in the Rue Morgue", the setup of Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is fairly different from that of the episode. In the tale, a narrator kills an old man he lives with and hides his body beneath the floorboards. But the ...
Episode 5, "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Poe may have a short story called "The Gold-Bug", but it's his story "William Wilson" that the "Goldbug" episode most resembles. This episode follows Tamerlane Usher (Samantha Sloyan) as she's haunted by an almost identical version of herself, which ...
Episode 6, "Goldbug"
Although it borrows its title directly from one of the Poe's most famous stories, Episode 7 really has a couple of different sources. The death of Frederick Usher (Henry Thomas), which is caused by a pendulous piece of building material swinging slow...
Episode 7, "The Pit and the Pendulum"
The finale is another episode that takes its inspiration from a few different Poe stories. The titular poem, "The Raven" references the tragic death of Roderick's granddaughter Lenore. Roderick and Madeline bricking up Griswold (Michael Trucco) behin...
Episode 8, "The Raven"
Edgar Allan Poe
Works by Edgar Allan Poe that inspired Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher,
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplat...
The Fall of the House of Usher (TV Tie-in Edition): And Other Stories That Inspired the Netflix Series|Hardcover
In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with things such as "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy," a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. T...
The premature burial 1839|Paperback
Edgar Allan Poe is credited with having pioneered the short story, having perfected the tale of psychological horror, and having revolutionized modern poetics. The entirety of Poe's body of imaginative work encompasses detective tales, satires, fable...
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)|Hardcover
With that undying line Edgar Allan Poe ensured his immortality in the annals of American letters. What student of literature or lover of poetry is not familiar with his poem “The Raven,” and the heartbreaking message implicit in its melancholy refrai...
The Raven and Other Poems (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)|Paperback
The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and one thousand other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms...
The Masque of the Red Death|Paperback
The story is a study of the psychology of guilt, often paired in analysis with Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".[2] In both, a murderer carefully conceals his crime and believes himself unassailable, but eventually breaks down and reveals himself, impelle...
Edgar Allen Poe: THE BLACK CAT: A tale of evil and the guilt that brings karma full circle on the evil doer
A sweet little cat drives a man to insanity and murder.... The grim death known as the plague roams a masquerade ball dressed in red.... A dwarf seeks his final revenge on his captors.... A sister calls to her beloved twin from beyond the grave.... P...
Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness|Hardcover
Having killed in a fit of passion, an unnamed narrator quickly hides the victim’s body only to be haunted by the victim’s relentless heartbeat. A pioneer of the short story genre, Poe’s stories typically captured themes of the macabre and included el...
The Tell-Tale Heart: Short Story|eBook
Two stories from Edgar Allan Poe. "William Wilson" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London. The tale follows the theme of the doppelgänger and is writte...
William Wilson and Bernice|Paperback
This book contains a fantastic collection of some of Edgar Allen Poe's best and best known short stories, including: "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Black Cat", "The Mystery of Marie Roget", "The Spectacles", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "Diddling", "The ...
The Pit and Pendulum - A Collection of Short Stories and Writings|Paperback
A collection of some of Edgar Allen Poe's most famous tales, including: "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", "Hop-Frog", "Some words With a Mummy", "Landor's Cottage", ""Thou Art the Man", "The Sphinx", "The Power of Words", "The Domain of...
The Cask of Amontillado and Other Tales|Paperback
The narrator is invited by a doctor to witness the unwrapping of a mummy at a private residence. After arriving, he and the assembled group of excited men begin opening the sarcophagus and eventually unveil the mummified body, which appears to be sur...
Some Words with A Mummy|Paperback
Arthur Gordon Pym & Transglobe Expedition Explained
The Fall of the House of Usher intentionally shrouds many elements of Arthur Gordon Pym's past but drops enough real-world references to hint at what makes him a worthy attorney for the Ushers.
In the first episode itself, The Fall of the House of Usher establishes that Arthur Gordon Pym is the Usher family's personal attorney, responsible for handling all legal charges against them. The series portrays that he is incredibly good at his job...
Arthur Gordon Pym's Role In The Usher Family & Past Explained
Midway through The Fall of the House of Usher's runtime, Roderick explains to Dupin why Pym is no ordinary attorney. He begins by revealing that Pym was a part of the Transglobe Expedition, a real expedition that started in 1979 and ended sometime in...
The True Story Of Arthur's Transglobe Expedition In House Of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher's Arthur Gordon Pym is based on the titular character in Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Although the book was published way before the Transglobe Expedition even happened, Rodre...
How House Of Usher's Arthur Gordon Pym Compares To Edgar Allan Poe's Short Story
Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is a pivotal work in which Poe calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing the truth. It is an archetypal American story of escape from domesti...
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Related Tales|Paperback
Books to Read After Watching Netflix’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’
When you crave for more Poe-esque macabre
On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While nei...
See What I Have Done
by Sarah Schmidt
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles a...
A Haunting on the Hill
by Elizabeth Hand
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, ...
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But pregnant and widowed just weeks after their wedding, with her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has...
The Silent Companions: A Novel
by Laura Purcell
1845: New York City is a sprawling warren of gaslit streets and crowded avenues, bustling with new immigrants and old money, optimism and opportunity, poverty and crime. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is all the rage—the success of which a struggling ...
Mrs. Poe
by Lynn Cullen
Tress Montor’s family used to mean something—until she didn’t have a family anymore. When her parents disappeared seven years ago while driving her best friend home, Tress lost everything. The entire town shuns her now that she lives with her drunken...
The Initial Insult
by Mindy McGinnis
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and po...
What Moves the Dead
by T. Kingfisher