Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages 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.Across far flung territories that are undergoing a forced globalization by military and Imperial means stories emerge from near and far of times that perfectly illustrate societies as they make their way through this bustling century of demands, opportunities, greed and despair. The need for mass entertainment in a myriad of cheap periodicals and magazines brought forth wonders of word, of wit and of narrative.1 - The Top 10 - The 19th Century - An Introduction2 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce3 - The Bet by Anton Chekhov4 - Desirees Baby by Kate Chopin5 - Passion In The Desert by Honoré de Balzac6 - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant7 - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman8 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol9 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne10 - The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe11 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev