Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few words can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories, which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors, whether of instant recognition or new to you, are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces, then we have all gained something.

Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.

01 - The Top 10 - Ambrose Bierce - An Introduction

02 - Ambrose Bierce - An Introduction

03 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

04 - A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce

05 - A Diagnosis of Death by Ambrose Bierce

06 - Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce

07 - The Affair At Coulter's Creek by Ambrose Bierce

08 - The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce

09 - The Story of a Conscience by Ambrose Bierce

10 - The Coup de Grace by Ambrose Bierce

11 - The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce

12 - The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce