Read by Christopher Ragland, Laurel Lefkow & Eric Meyers (Unabridged: 7hrs 10mins)

Featuring stories by Kate Chopin, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Willa Cather & others.

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 America strides into its own future. She ruptures herself in a bloody Civil War, crushes and removes Native Americans from their own sacred lands and she clothes herself as a superpower in waiting.  Her literary might also begins to reach an expanding and diverse population eager for distraction from the hard labor of their lives.  Our authors offer up a unique and unquestionably brilliant range of views in ten stories that helped to shape literature.

In this compilation -