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.

As the new nation gathered its strength it pushed into new territories, underwent a tumultuous civil war and tried to reconcile itself into a whole. Its authors wrote stories of intense beauty and detailed witness. Literature was engaging and persuasive and now a mass-market industry open to a far wider audience.

1 - The Top 10 - The 19th Century - The American Men - An Introduction

2 - The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

3 - The Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain

4 - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes by Henry James

5 - The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving

6 - The Open Boat by Stephen Crane

7 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

8 - The Luck of Roaring Camp by Bret Harte

9 - The Repairer of Reputations Part 1 by Robert W Chambers

10 - The Repairer of Reputations Part 2 by Robert W Chambers

11 - The Lady, or the Tiger by Frank Stockton

12 - Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne