A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
An unknown name on a civil councillor’s visitor list turns a small puzzle into a consuming spiritualist obsession.
A comfortable reformer judges a village priest unfit for service, then learns what hunger looks like when pride tries to hide it.
A conscientious husband hires a midwife by night, but his rigid sense of fairness turns every ordinary exchange into an ordeal.
A polite writer grants an aspiring dramatist half an hour to read her work and discovers that she has brought five acts.
A family council debates whether to shield a privileged young forger, while the accused listens and decides what kind of man he is.
A harmless sound in a wedding kitchen convinces a schoolmaster that scandal is about to ruin him.
A sheltered young woman mistakes theatrical passion for real love and follows a touring actor into his brutal world.
A respectable official finds a bundled baby on his doorstep and assumes his secret affair has finally caught up with him.
A bored lover gains a child’s confidence, then turns the boy’s secret meetings with his father into ammunition for an adult quarrel.
An indecent antique passes from one grateful professional to another as each admirer searches for a respectable way to lose it.
A retired lieutenant spends a sweltering day condemning the town’s idle natives while his own hours slip away.
A solitary landowner explains how love entered his friends’ household and remained unspoken while duty and hesitation consumed the years.
After an opera, a sixteen-year-old tries to turn two admirers into the material for her first grand romantic sorrow.
A strong old actor falls ill far from home, while his theatrical companions mistake remedies and affection for understanding.
A betrayed husband enters a gun shop with murder in mind, but every purchase forces him to reconsider the price of revenge.
A self-dramatizing widow offers a young writer the tragic story of her life aboard a train.
A sober, pious man steals a midnight drink, swallows paraffin instead, and spends the night preparing for death.
Two small children make newborn kittens the center of their world, while the adults around them barely notice the stakes.
A landowner discovers the exact price of being noticed in a government office.
An impoverished young bride enters a joyless marriage, then discovers that beauty can confer a power her husband never expected.
An impoverished young woman supports a medical student who treats her body, labor, and loyalty as conveniences.
At Christmas, an elderly village couple hires a letter writer to reach the daughter they have not heard from in four years.
An impoverished landowner lectures a promising guest on aristocratic superiority while his daughters wait for a chance to speak.
A barber learns midway through a free haircut that poverty has cost him the woman he loves.
