A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
After an evening of ghost stories, a rational architect finds that a dark, empty house is more than his nerves can bear.
A weary court official reaches his summer villa hungry for dinner and rest, only to find that family life has no place ready for him.
A merchant’s self-righteous tale about an orphan’s mother forces two unhappy village women to consider the limits of obedience.
A bitter coffin maker counts every human experience as a financial loss until illness at home forces a different reckoning.
A sleepy family turns the last evening before Lent into an earnest campaign of lessons, tea, ritual, and still more food.
A thirteen-year-old servant forced to work without sleep drifts between chores, memories, and visions as a baby cries through the night.
A penniless painter prepares to leave his summer lodging while dreaming of fame and avoiding the young woman who believes in his future.
A pompous official receives a tribute from his subordinates whose solemn meaning may not survive the trip home.
A seven-year-old watches the household arrange its cook’s marriage and struggles to understand why a stranger can claim authority over her.
On Easter morning, a newly married farmer passes a sick soldier on the road and cannot quiet his conscience afterward.
Olenka can live only through someone else’s passions, adopting each beloved’s work, worries, and opinions as her own.
As a child lies gravely ill, his mother and longtime doctor confront a question that has festered between them for years.
A sick doctor finds a telegram that confirms his wife’s affair and tries to release them both from a ruined marriage.
A vain provincial actor’s boast about a conquest turns dangerous when one listener knows the woman and demands satisfaction.
On Easter Eve, a worried deacon asks a learned priest to condemn his wayward son in a letter neither man can truly own.
On New Year’s Eve, a young woman peers into a mirror for a glimpse of marriage and sees far more of its demands than she expected.
A possible lottery win gives a comfortable couple a sudden view of riches—and of each other.
While showing an architect a condemned tenement, a landlord recalls how one family’s ordinary poverty became a rapid descent.
A pregnant hostess endures a long name-day party while resentment, jealousy, and fatigue expose the strain in her marriage.
A gentle lawyer accepts a retired Cossack’s hospitality and spends a sleepless night inside the old man’s brutal, self-satisfied world.
A young teacher wins the domestic happiness he imagined, only to find contentment raising questions about the life he has chosen.
In a shuttered provincial house, a mother and daughter sew endlessly for a marriage that remains only a hope.
Newly married to a wealthy older colonel, a young woman remains fixated on the indifferent friend she once hoped to marry.
A jealous sexton blames his wife for every storm that sends a young traveler to their isolated hut.
