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 volume our authors take on War, the destroyer of humanity. Our literary masters bring the true scale of the horror in sometimes tiny fragments of peoples lives to reveal its true and deep-felt effects.

01 - The Top 10 - War - An Introduction

02 - Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant

03 - War by Luigi Pirandello

04 - The Locket by Kate Chopin

05 - Three Wars by Emile Zola

06 - Them Others by Stacy Aumonier

07 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

08 - The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet

09 - The Bowmen by Arthur Machen

10 - My First Goose by Isaac Babel

11 - The German Spy by William Hope Hodgson