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.

In this Century of profound change for women our Atlantic neighbours produced authors of extraordinary ability that dazzled us all with a range of ideas, characters and stories of such magnificence that literature would never be the same again. Genius is written in their names.

1 - The Top 10 - The Women - The American 20th Century - An Introduction

2 - Paul's Case by Willa Cather

3 - Here We Are by Dorothy Parker

4 - The Stones of the Village by Alice Dunbar Nelson

5 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

6 - A Redeeming Sacrifice by Lucy Maud Montgomery

7 - Rooms by Gertrude Stein

8 - The Difference by Ellen Glasgow

9 - The Hoodoo by Martha Gruening

10 - The Moaning Lily by Emma Vane

11 - White Bread by Zona Gale