Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A words 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.

Whether they hail from the Lowlands or the Highlands, to be a Scottish author is to part of a quite an extraordinary band of authors and its literary traditions. These beguiling stories example the full range and majesty of their talents and the subjects they explore.

01 - The Top 10 - The Scottish - An Introduction

02 - The Inconsiderate Waiter by J. M. Barrie

03 - The Loathly Opposite by John Buchan

04 - The Prediction by Mary Diana Dods writing as David Lyndsey

05 - B24 by Arthur Conan Doyle

06 - The Metropolitian Emigrant by John Galt

07 - A Saga of the Seas by Kenneth Grahame

08 - A Story of a Wedding Tour by Margaret Oliphant

08 - Stephen Archer by George MacDonald

10 - The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott

11 - The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson