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.

'The Old South' is usually seen as an alluring, almost mysterious mythological land that the rest of America could never be. Side by side poverty and the genteel well-to-do have lived, on one side disparaging, on the other envious. Literary talents here are everywhere, detailing and witnessing for generations to come the inequality and iniquity that fuel much of its famed literature.

1 - The Top 10 - US Authors of the South - An Introduction

2 - The Million Pound Bank Note by Mark Twain

3 - The Caballero's Way by O Henry

4 - On the Gull's Road by Willa Cather

5 - The Stones of the Village by Alice Dunbar Nelson

6 - A Cullenden of Virginia by Thomas Wolfe

7 - The Octoroon's Revenge by Ruth D Todd

8 - The City of Refuge by Rudolph Fisher

9 - The Difference by Ellen Glasgow

10 - Skulls in the Stars by Robert E Howard

11 - The Strange Looking Man by Fanny Kemble Johnson