It was a dream job – until I got hit in the head with a pickle. . . My dress-up shoes are pinching my toes. . . Mississippi Mamaw muscadine jelly biscuits for breakfast, and the fried bologna on the white wonder for lunch. . . Life can be this frightening sometimes. . . "Where are we?" she asks with anxious uncertainty. . . The queen called. . . Sir John FitzAlan drew a slow breath against the pain in his half-healed side. . . Mandy crunches on thinly packed snow with her powder blue hikin...

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 ...