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 that most heinous of crimes is explored and dissected by the minds of our classic authors who show that the taking of another's life in print is so real that the possibility arises that they have carried out this deed in reality. Genius has many names.

01 - The Top 10 - Murder - An Introduction

02 - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde

03 - Lord Arthur Savile's Crime - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde

04 - The Cask of Amontillardo by Edgar Allan Poe

05 - Claude Gueux by Victor Hugo

06 - In The Dark by Edith Nesbit

07 - Brothers by Sherwood Anderson

08 - The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood

09 - Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee

10 - A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

11 - In A Grove by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

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

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