A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Recurring elements in the story’s premise.
A hotel waiter misplaces a piano-tuner’s boots, sending their anxious owner into an increasingly dangerous mix-up.
One enormous eelpout under a riverbank root draws workers, a shepherd, and their master into the water.
A planter hunts the alien beast eating his crop, only to find that each mile of the chase makes his quarry smarter and more dangerous.
Telepath Underhill and his feline Partner, Lady May, must destroy an alien predator in the milliseconds between jumps through interstellar space.
A convalescent observer follows an unreadable old man through London, convinced that his need for crowds hides a life of crime.
When two women are brutally killed in a locked Paris room, Dupin tests the evidence that the police dismiss.
A disgraced man recounts how a namesake who looked and acted like him kept appearing whenever he was about to cross a moral line.
A family’s hatred of hunting begins with two brothers and the immense wolf that turns their winter chase into a private war.
After crossing a feared secret society, an arrogant colonial traveler finds that revenge follows him from Sierra Leone to London.
A colonial patrol trapped on a cliff must escape enemy fire, thirst, and a drop that seems impossible to survive.
After his rival dies, a celebrated entomologist discovers a moth no one else can see—and cannot stop trying to catch it.
A seaside walker discovers that unfamiliar deep-sea creatures have reached the English coast—and have developed a taste for human prey.
A nervous visitor steals a scientist’s deadliest culture and races across London with catastrophe—and fame—on his mind.
Three horsemen pursuing a fleeing woman enter a silent valley where the wind carries vast webs alive with spiders.
Confined to a couch, an invalid watches a distant manhunt as entertainment until the chase crosses the river and comes to his window.
Two bored collectors steal an amulet from a centuries-old grave, then hear a hound closing in across the night.
To settle her father's debt, El-Soo puts herself up for auction while refusing the creditor who wants to own her.
A feared Albanian bandit carries a child across the mountains, leaving a family to chase a terrifying rumor.
A Polish exile in Naples finds love while carrying papers that could imperil an empire.
A major crosses a ruined battlefield to negotiate peace, unaware that the autonomous weapons around him have learned to look human.
A shopkeeper notices a corpse that his entire town ignores, then realizes being the only person alarmed may mark him as prey.
A condemned hunter is sent two centuries into the past to kill a religious founder, armed only with a gun and the target’s skull.
Treasure hunters on a remote Pacific island discover that a Martian parasite can unite animals and people into one obedient mind.
A lone prospector crosses Venus’s deadliest desert while strict cash-only services deny him the supplies he needs to survive.
