Not just a great writer, Poe had a circle of friends and family that cared for and about him, says the author of a new biography.

Never in doubt of his own abilities, Edgar Allan Poe pursued extremes in literature and in life.

Yet it was not always so. The roots of modern detective fiction go back over 150 years to a Boston-born master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. And the most shocking true-crime story in Poe's day ...