Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They 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.

This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.

1 - The Top 10 - The 1880's - The Men - An Introduction

2 - The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

3 - How Much Land Does A Man Need by Leo Tolstoy

4 - The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson

5 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov

6 - The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy

7 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde

8 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde

9 - A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce

10 - The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

11 - The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank Stockton

12 - The Signal by Vsevolod Garshin