A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the story is told.
A married woman tries to end a friend’s pursuit, only to discover that her principles are less secure than his attention makes them seem.
A sensitive law student joins two friends on a tour of Moscow brothels and finds himself unable to accept their practiced indifference.
A polite writer grants an aspiring dramatist half an hour to read her work and discovers that she has brought five acts.
A family council debates whether to shield a privileged young forger, while the accused listens and decides what kind of man he is.
A respectable official finds a bundled baby on his doorstep and assumes his secret affair has finally caught up with him.
After an opera, a sixteen-year-old tries to turn two admirers into the material for her first grand romantic sorrow.
A betrayed husband enters a gun shop with murder in mind, but every purchase forces him to reconsider the price of revenge.
A toddler’s first walk beyond the nursery turns ordinary streets, strangers, animals, and sounds into an overwhelming new universe.
A seasoned prosecutor discovers that reasoning with his seven-year-old son is harder than addressing any court.
A boy approaches confession with fear, rivalry, hunger, and a vivid hope that absolution will make him new.
An eight-year-old starving on a Moscow street fixates on a restaurant sign and an unknown food called oysters.
A thirteen-year-old servant forced to work without sleep drifts between chores, memories, and visions as a baby cries through the night.
A possible lottery win gives a comfortable couple a sudden view of riches—and of each other.
A pregnant hostess endures a long name-day party while resentment, jealousy, and fatigue expose the strain in her marriage.
A fever overtakes a young lieutenant on the train home, distorting every sound, face, and passing hour.
A failing advance man hides beneath a hotel sheet while alcohol and drugs turn his last escape into a grotesque pursuit he cannot outrun.
Nick Adams walks away from a burned town into the Michigan wilderness, building a camp and fishing the river one careful act at a time.
A wounded lieutenant keeps vigil against sleep, replaying memory, prayer, and imagined trout streams to hold his soul together after the war.
A veteran returns to his Oklahoma home after the war and finds that the town, his family, and the future they expect no longer fit him.
A boy’s holiday glow collapses when his father reveals that the girl he loves has chosen someone else.
An aging bullfighter takes a cheap night fight in Madrid, determined to prove that the old skill and courage are still in him.
A celebrated society marksman provokes a duel, then spends a sleepless night confronting the fear his reputation cannot admit.
After forty years in the same dim office, an aging bookkeeper takes a spring evening walk and sees the life he never lived.
A lover of darkness wanders through Paris as the familiar city falls silent and dawn seems to recede beyond reach.
