A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
A general challenges a dinner party’s easy use of the word “horrible” with two memories of people stripped of humanity.
Two guides winter alone at an Alpine inn until one vanishes into the snow and the survivor begins hearing his call.
A landowner’s annual hunting visit exposes a gamekeeper’s private crisis, then turns into a night of fire, flight, and irreversible violence.
A Norman peasant explains how Saint Michel acquired the Devil’s rich farmland through bargains, crops, and local cunning.
Two homesick Breton soldiers share every Sunday—until a cowgirl’s kindness divides them.
During the Prussian occupation, an officer mistakes a grieving woman’s immobility for defiance and decides to punish her.
A masked dancer collapses at a Paris ball, and the face beneath his disguise leads a doctor into a marriage shaped by vanity and endurance.
On a bright beach, a painter walks beside his disabled wife while a friend tells the harsh story behind their silent marriage.
A traveler visits a notorious countrywoman whose prosperity depends on the children society pays to stare at.
A shaved moustache sends a society woman from bedroom complaint to a memory of recognizing French soldiers among the dead.
A clerk’s dissatisfied wife borrows a glittering necklace for one night among the wealthy, then pays dearly when it vanishes.
A farming couple schedule a funeral around the colza crop, but the dying old man refuses to cooperate with their practical plans.
A respected village priest receives a ragged visitor whose face and faded photograph reopen the betrayal that drove him into the Church.
An opium dreamer explains why the imagined East offers him the peace and pleasure he cannot find in modern life.
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 late-night walk with a nervous pedlar leads a young oarsman into a poor household where each sound suggests the wrong kind of danger.
A newspaper’s suicide statistics carry a riverside reader into a dream of a Paris institution that promises a quiet, respectable death.
A stranger’s watchful presence unsettles a fisherman’s household until his identity forces the family to reconsider every bond within it.
A coastal place-name preserves the story of an austere village priest whose hatred of desire turns violent on a storm-beaten cliff.
A reluctant traveler bound for Italy meets an aloof young woman whose sudden proposal reshapes his carefully planned holiday.
An aging sportsman keeps hunting season alive through elaborate dinners, improbable anecdotes, and one coveted delicacy.
A frugal Norman peasant picks up a scrap of string on market day and finds that a harmless act can destroy a man’s reputation.
A respected lawyer accused of violating his lover’s grave refuses counsel and asks a shocked courtroom to hear why he returned to her.
