Nothing is so improbable as what is true. It is the unexpected that occurs; but that is not saying enough; it is also the unlikelyone might almost say the impossible.Ambrose Bierce

This collection of fourteen of Ambrose Bierces short stories begins with An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Bierces best-known story and a good example of how his writing jars the listener out of a comfortable complacency with its improbable twists of plot, tone, or perspective.

It was for this reason that Bierce wrote short stories rather than novels. According to literary critic Cathy N. Davidson, Bierce derided the novel of his time precisely because it groaned under the burden of a predictable, ponderous devotion to probability.

This collection includes:
1. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
2. Beyond the Wall
3. What I Saw of Shiloh
4. The Eyes of the Panther
5. Chickamauga
6. The Death of Halpin Frayser
7. A Son of the Gods: A Study in the Present Tense
8. A Resumed Identity
9. One of the Missing
10. The Damned Thing
11. Killed at Resaca
12. Moxons Master
13. An Affair of Outposts
14. A Horseman in the Sky

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), American journalist, short-story writer, and poet, was born in Ohio, served in the Civil War, and then settled in San Francisco. He wrote for Hearst's Examiner; his wit and satire making him the literary dictator of the Pacific coast and strongly influencing many writers. After a hectic career and some notably intemperate journalism, tired of American civilization, he disappeared into war-torn Mexico at the close of 1913.