A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
At her deathbed, a devoted younger sister asks forgiveness for the secret that has shaped both women’s lives.
On a train, a magistrate recognizes a former officer whose war injuries seem to confirm a familiar tale of lost love.
A farmer bargains with a deathbed nurse, turning his mother's final hours into a contest of rural thrift.
Two poachers on the Seine buy a dying donkey, turn its suffering into sport, and look for one more way to profit.
On her first trip to Paris, a newlywed becomes alarmed when her husband does not rejoin her after boarding an omnibus.
A bickering couple hears a midnight intruder in the garden, and the husband’s investigation changes their marriage.
A general challenges a dinner party’s easy use of the word “horrible” with two memories of people stripped of humanity.
A contented clerk dismisses his beloved wife’s glittering jewels as paste until widowhood forces him to have one valued.
A wealthy friend’s will leaves a married couple arguing over whether reputation matters more than one million francs.
An innkeeper buys a stubborn widow’s farm on a life annuity, then grows impatient when she remains stubbornly healthy.
A devoted widower pours all his love into the son his wife left behind, until an angry servant voices what the whole town knows.
A traveler visits a notorious countrywoman whose prosperity depends on the children society pays to stare at.
A clerk’s dissatisfied wife borrows a glittering necklace for one night among the wealthy, then pays dearly when it vanishes.
After burying his young wife, a colonel returns home to a letter in which she explains the hidden coercion behind her death.
A lonely woman adopts an orphan for love, then begins to fear the silent young man growing up inside her house.
A sheltered young wife befriends the woman named in an anonymous warning about her husband—and trusts them both.
A newly appointed State Councillor scatters favors across Paris until one generous recommendation threatens his carefully polished importance.
On her way to a lover’s apartment, a Parisian society wife discovers that habit can exhaust even the most forbidden affair.
A stranger’s watchful presence unsettles a fisherman’s household until his identity forces the family to reconsider every bond within it.
A bored baroness copies a window signal she sees across the street and discovers that curiosity can be taken as a business offer.
A smug husband decides he would recognize any sign of adultery and devises a test that may prove more than he wants to know.
A disabled beggar, rejected from every familiar door, sets out hungry across a winter landscape governed by suspicion and contempt.
An unemployed carpenter walks from town to town seeking work until hunger and official suspicion drive him toward collapse.
A miserly woman refuses to replace her husband’s ruined umbrella—until an insurance policy suggests a way to avoid paying.
