Guy de Maupassant was an absolute master of the short story genre, delighting in clever plotting, concise style, and efficient storytelling, which he used to produce stunning pieces in a very condensed format. Maupassant specialized in realism, with its sharp criticism of lower human nature and society, and fantastic, although his ventures in the supernatural are often used as an implicit symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds—he was absolutely fascinated with psychiatry, which was nascent at the time. He produced more than 300 short stories; we selected for you 9 of the most bizarre, influent, humorous or plain shocking, from chilling horror story to playful essay on the virtue of the male mustache, through moral tale and venture in the mysteries of the unexplained. Enjoy 9 of Maupassant's best short stories: The Englishman of Etretat, The Mustache, A Mother of Monsters, A Portrait, A Widow, Madame Baptiste, The Drunkard, Magnetism, An Uncomfortable Bed.