A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the story is told.
A doctor’s claim to some driftwood is challenged by the lumberman who knows exactly where the logs came from.
On a moonlit fishing trip, Nick and Marjorie circle the quiet truth that their relationship has stopped being what it was.
Two strangers take over a small-town lunchroom and wait for a former prizefighter who knows exactly why they have come.
As an autumn storm lashes Michigan, Nick Adams and Bill drink by the fire and talk around the breakup Nick cannot quite explain.
After the crucifixion, three Roman soldiers drink, joke, and circle the question of what it means to endure suffering.
An eighteenth-century grandmother hears modern tales of jealous revenge and gives her sheltered granddaughter a scandalous lesson about love and marriage.
A rural assize tries two drunken men whose attempt to price a wife by volume turns marriage, commerce, and justice into grotesque comedy.
A faithless husband grows jealous when his independent wife attracts attention, and she answers his renewed desire with a price.
A rural court must decide whether an older woman can reclaim land from the young man she raised, supported, and expected never to leave.
Five bored men ask a doctor for a new pleasure, and his account of ether offers more temptation than warning.
A married couple stages an illicit evening together, only for honest questions to become more stimulating than the disguise.
Two tipsy noblewomen trade secrets, and one boasts of turning a servant’s devotion into summer entertainment.
A pregnant widow is sued in open court by the married man she promised to pay for helping secure an inheritance.
A dinner-table skeptic challenges tales of telepathy and prophecy, then offers two unsettling examples from his own experience.
A young marquise determined to escape her jealous husband hires an expert accomplice to produce evidence no court can ignore.
On a nighttime walk through Paris, a convivial dinner guest argues that no friendship or love can breach the solitude of the mind.
A husband’s teasing questions about his wife’s first marriage turn posthumous jealousy into a dangerous demand for honesty.
Three drunken artists in military costumes capture a burglar and turn his arrest into an improvised campaign.
An austere officer returns from maneuvers burdened by one lapse and insists on confessing it to his far more worldly wife.
A wealthy friend’s will leaves a married couple arguing over whether reputation matters more than one million francs.
An opium dreamer explains why the imagined East offers him the peace and pleasure he cannot find in modern life.
A divorced man meets his remarried former wife at a hotel and turns their old grievances into a calculated new proposal.
A confident Parisian explains how two carefully scheduled affairs collapsed through a silent exchange of pins in his bedroom.
A marquise arrives laughing with a secret: she has chosen a direct revenge on her jealous, abusive husband.
