Top 10 Short Stories, The - European Murder

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 the pens of our European authors examine murder. This dark and evil deed is carried out for many reasons. Our authors, including Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Mikhail Bulgakov, Arthur Conan Doyle and many others are those charged with revealing each and every crime scene. 1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - European Murder - An Introduction 2 - Claude Gueux by Victor Hugo 3 - Lord Arthur Saville's Crime - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde 4 - Lord Arthur Saville's Crime - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde 5 - The Murderer by Mikhail Bulgakov 6 - The Force of Blood by Miguel de Cervantes 7 - The Vendetta by Guy de Maupassant 8 - Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson 9 - The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller by Gustave Flaubert 10 - The Lie by Leonid Andreyev 11 - Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee 12 - The Story of B 24 by Arthur Conan Doyle