The Top 10 Short Stories - The Murder Mystery: The ten best murder mystery short stories of all time

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 lead us through that most popular of genres – The Murder Mystery. Tracking down the killer and the motive is examined by such masters as Robert Louis Stevenson, H G Wells, Susan Glaspell, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and many others with twists of fate, deductions of ingenuity, and literary brilliance.

1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - The Murder Mystery - An Introduction

2 - Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson

3 - The Cask of Amontillardo by Edgar Allan Poe

4 - The Cone by H G Wells

5 - The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce

6 - Better Dead by J M Barrie

7 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

8 - In A Grove by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

9 - Was It An Illusion. A Parson's Story by Amelia Edwards

10 - August Heat by W F Harvey

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

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