A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The narrator’s attitude toward the story.
At a Cajun ball, a farmer watches the woman he loves draw the attention of a wealthy planter.
A planter's challenge to a segregated school sends its teacher to New Orleans, where their conflict follows her.
A town speculates about whom an awkward young woman will marry.
Sent to work for a Louisiana family, a young Indigenous woman longs for the woods but grows attached to their baby.
A lawyer urges a woman to divorce her absent husband and grows invested in her decision.
A poor market worker supports an older woman from the family he once served.
After hearing that her husband has died, a woman discovers an unexpected feeling while she sits alone.
Two old friends keep a twenty-year appointment, but the lives they built have carried them to opposite sides of the law.
A shopgirl living on six dollars a week faces the glittering promise of dinner and the danger hidden behind it.
On a train crossing the West, a chance reunion forces a young man to choose between truth and the image he once hoped to become.
A young architect spends his carefully saved evening posing as a wealthy clubman when he invites a stranger to dinner.
A carefree young heir must explain how he spends a thousand-dollar bequest before learning what the money may truly be worth.
After watching the woman he loves marry another man, a proud bachelor reconstructs the misunderstanding that destroyed his chance.
A detective recognizes an old friend as a murderer, but an unpaid debt makes arrest more complicated than duty should allow.
A homeless New Yorker tries every trick he can think of to secure a warm winter bed behind bars.
A proud former Confederate officer is offended when an actor turns his old-fashioned manners and clothes into a theatrical sensation.
When his wife unexpectedly leaves for the night, a bored husband discovers how much of his ordinary life he has taken for granted.
A chance meeting in a city park lets two strangers imagine love beyond the boundaries of wealth and social rank.
When soldiers on a remote asteroid declare themselves plants, a psychiatrist enters the woods to find who taught them.
A major crosses a ruined battlefield to negotiate peace, unaware that the autonomous weapons around him have learned to look human.
Three Terran agents flee Mars with a stolen city hidden among office supplies, but one fellow passenger asks too many questions.
After eight years underground, three men risk the radioactive surface and find the robots fighting their war have kept a secret.
A terrified Mars-bound crewman is given a mental refuge so convincing that his childhood memories become the only world he can see.
In a crime-free future, a pulp writer discovers that a perfect society has left him dangerously short of material.
