Tantalizing, as ingenious as they are devious, the classic stories in this continually arresting collection come with an irresistible challenge: At their end they leave it to you, the reader, to determine how they end.

For ultimately it's the reader who authors the fate of the brave youth as he contemplates which of the two doors in the king's arena he will choose in Frank Stockton's famous and unforgettable "The Lady, or the Tiger?" And which of the two brothers in three-time Edgar-winner Stanley Ellin's "Unreasonable Doubt" shoots a bullet square in the middle of their rich uncle's forehead? And just what not-so-sweet secret is the prim Miss Spence hiding behind her smile in Aldous Huxley's deliciously enigmatic tale? You decide.

In all, as in "The Moment of Decision"--a chilling tale that seals an escape artist inside an airless stone cell with a heavy wooden door, which may or may not open--the moment of decision is yours.