A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How quickly the story moves.
An ardent love letter receives a meticulous reply from a man who finds romantic language more dangerous to desire than silence.
When an ostrich supposedly swallows a priceless diamond aboard ship, five ordinary birds become the stakes in an escalating auction.
At the Last Judgment, tyrants, saints, and ordinary souls learn that divine scrutiny exposes more than public sins.
Alone in a remote Borneo observatory, an astronomer discovers that the darkness inside the dome holds a threat far closer than the stars.
A shipwreck survivor in a diving suit is mistaken for a god, but keeping up the role may cost him the treasure he came to recover.
A mild schoolmaster tests his courage with a harmless mock burglary and stumbles into a real criminal escape.
A colonial patrol trapped on a cliff must escape enemy fire, thirst, and a drop that seems impossible to survive.
A professional burglar poses as a landscape painter, only to find that art criticism is the least predictable hazard of the job.
A confident rural army meets an enemy weapon built to cross trenches, resist rifles, and turn courage into a tactical liability.
A stubborn skeptic discovers that any command he truly wills becomes real, though precision is not among his gifts.
A physiologist’s new stimulant speeds thought and movement so radically that the outside world seems frozen in time.
A shy novice becomes a theater critic and finds the stage’s poses and speeches steadily replacing his own personality.
A timid shopkeeper eats a strange mushroom after a domestic quarrel and returns home with a violent idea of merriment.
A seaside walker discovers that unfamiliar deep-sea creatures have reached the English coast—and have developed a taste for human prey.
A new star grows brighter each night, and one mathematician realizes that its path will bring catastrophe to Earth.
A nervous visitor steals a scientist’s deadliest culture and races across London with catastrophe—and fame—on his mind.
A mediocre painter watches his portrait acquire a devilish expression—and then hears the canvas criticize his art.
Over whisky, a taxidermist boasts that preserving nature is only the beginning of his art—and explains how easily collectors can be fooled.
An obese clubman demands an old family remedy for losing weight, only to discover how literally the recipe works.
Three horsemen pursuing a fleeing woman enter a silent valley where the wind carries vast webs alive with spiders.
A scientist activates a machine that reveals forms of life hidden beside us, trapping his former friend in the experiment.
A traveling showman arrives with electrical marvels and visions that draw a restless city toward a night of collective terror.
When an orphan’s kitten vanishes in Ulthar, every cat in the village leaves home for the same night.
Three robbers target an isolated former sea captain whose house contains bottles that answer when he speaks.
