A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The readership the story was written for.
A family’s hatred of hunting begins with two brothers and the immense wolf that turns their winter chase into a private war.
A hunter’s letter about woodcock season turns to a rural killing and the local idea of honor that judged it.
A poor, naïve farm girl enters service with a wealthy widower whose demands soon extend far beyond cooking and cleaning.
A racing tide traps an insurance inspector and an English family on a wreck, creating a New Year he never forgets.
An anticlerical village joiner wants a lucrative church contract, but the parish priest sets a spiritual price for the work.
A Paris officer recognizes a former colonial soldier whose chaotic courage and appetite once shaped life inside a blockaded town.
A traveller pauses beside a dark reservoir and hears how two brothers faced a sudden, desperate accident there.
During the siege of Paris, two old fishing companions cross the French lines for one peaceful morning beside the Seine.
A ferry passenger learns why an old friend’s marriage soured after his once-enchanting English bride became easier to understand.
A beautiful countess rebels against the husband who has used pregnancy to control her, choosing a revenge designed to poison his certainty.
A chance meeting in a beer hall reveals why a once-privileged schoolmate has spent his adult life drinking at the same table.
A terrified Prussian straggler searches occupied Normandy for the safest possible enemy: someone willing to take him prisoner.
An exhausted French detachment facing a deadly winter march finds unexpected resolve after taking two civilians under its protection.
A solitary collector watches every object in his beloved house walk away into the night—and no explanation can make the sight less real.
An ardent love letter receives a meticulous reply from a man who finds romantic language more dangerous to desire than silence.
A chance encounter in a provincial tobacco shop revives a vanished world of river outings, hard work, and ingenious schemes.
A bedridden tavern keeper’s furious wife finds an outrageous way to make him useful.
A failing shopkeeper finally tells his wife they face ruin, just as a family catastrophe offers an answer neither can admit wanting.
When an ostrich supposedly swallows a priceless diamond aboard ship, five ordinary birds become the stakes in an escalating auction.
A stranger on a train recounts a second life in a future world, where love and private happiness stand against an approaching global war.
A poor scholarship student makes one accidental movement during an exam and must decide whether winning matters more than his principles.
At the Last Judgment, tyrants, saints, and ordinary souls learn that divine scrutiny exposes more than public sins.
A stranded collector hatches an extinct giant bird on a lonely atoll and gains a companion that keeps growing.
The timid inventor of a working flying machine becomes a public hero—and discovers that everyone expects him to risk the first flight.
