A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
Unable to sleep in a provincial chemist’s shop, a lonely young wife welcomes two officers whose late-night errand becomes open flirtation.
One accidental sneeze sends a timid clerk into an escalating panic over rank, manners, and official displeasure.
A gravely ill schoolmaster insists on attending the annual dinner that celebrates his pupils, determined to reject every hint of weakness.
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.
Three friends invent time travel, claim prehistoric America as a nation, and discover that founding a country is harder than reaching the past.
A hunted mutant slips past Pluto’s quarantine and finds a dead scientist, a false disaster, and a doorway to a world remembered only in nightmares.
A space Scanner temporarily regains his senses and learns that his own guild plans to kill the man who could make their sacrifice obsolete.
In a future where nations rent battlefields and fight by remote control, an untested pilot is handed three warships at once.
A cook who considers himself a great philosopher receives a visit from the Devil and tries to bargain away his soul.
A mock scientific essay defines the perfect swindler and catalogs the small cons that make fraud look respectable.
A proud entrepreneur explains the strict method behind a career built on nuisance, provocation, fraud, and other unusual trades.
A barber's son explains how plagiarism, paid praise, personal attacks, and business deals made him a national literary authority.
A journalist reports that an obscure chemist has found a way to turn lead into pure gold.
A proud newspaper editor answers a rival's insult with a paragraph built around one letter, then the type runs out.
Two strangers take over a small-town lunchroom and wait for a former prizefighter who knows exactly why they have come.
A childless couple’s expected inheritance comes with one condition, turning marital respectability into a desperate financial problem.
After forty years in the same dim office, an aging bookkeeper takes a spring evening walk and sees the life he never lived.
A vain former minister recalls the ingenious deception that kept a clever bourgeois lover in his life for three years.
When a fisherman’s arm is trapped in a trawling cable, his captain brother must choose between saving him and saving an expensive net.
A lonely traveler reunites with a boastful school friend whose lavish home hides an unexpected family business.
A Norman brothel closes for a country confirmation, carrying its lively household from familiar commerce into an unexpected sacred occasion.
A newly appointed State Councillor scatters favors across Paris until one generous recommendation threatens his carefully polished importance.
A miserly woman refuses to replace her husband’s ruined umbrella—until an insurance policy suggests a way to avoid paying.
