A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
A calendar event within the story.
A wealthy factory owner spends Christmas confronting the distance between her good intentions, her workers, and the life she longs to lead.
At Christmas, an elderly village couple hires a letter writer to reach the daughter they have not heard from in four years.
Two schoolboys arrive home for Christmas with maps, a pistol, and a secret plan to cross Siberia and seek gold in America.
Snowbound at a roadside tavern on Christmas Eve, a young landowner hears how a ruined idealist’s convictions consumed his life.
A stranded hospital assistant seeks shelter at a rural inn and finds himself drawn to the dangerous freedom of its notorious guests.
On Christmas Eve, a resentful shoemaker meets a strange customer and gets a chance to trade poverty for wealth.
On Christmas Eve, a nine-year-old apprentice writes home for rescue from hunger, beatings, and sleepless work in Moscow.
Two hunters leave a lonely Norman château for midnight Mass and a condolence call that turns Christmas custom into grim comedy.
A skeptical country doctor recalls the Christmas night when fear, faith, and illness combined to produce what others called a miracle.
A lonely Parisian’s plan for a generous Christmas supper with a stranger develops an alarming complication before bedtime.
A man follows a family summons to a silent New England town, where a Christmas gathering leads beneath the local church.
Gabriel Conroy attends his aunts’ annual dance, where an evening of music and conversation unsettles his assumptions.
A woman estranged from her son takes in a sick child after a family party.
With Christmas near, a plantation household searches in the rain for three missing turkeys.
A traveler with a broken buggy is mistaken for a soldier who never came home for Christmas.
On a bitter Christmas Eve, an out-of-work watchmaker hears a violin through the wall just as he loses hope.
Della has one dollar and eighty-seven cents, and one day left to buy her husband a Christmas present worth giving.
At a Christmas house party, Bertie pursues Roberta, plots revenge on Tuppy, and tries to stay in Sir Roderick’s good graces.
Bingo tries to win Mary with a village Christmas show, while a rival and a bookmaker watch his every move.
19 stories
