A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
Five rainy days without her husband send a devoted young wife into town, where his empty flat raises an unwelcome question.
Weeks before her wedding, a young woman begins to see her comfortable provincial life—and the future chosen for her—with new clarity.
A hotel waiter misplaces a piano-tuner’s boots, sending their anxious owner into an increasingly dangerous mix-up.
Two schoolboys arrive home for Christmas with maps, a pistol, and a secret plan to cross Siberia and seek gold in America.
A village choirmaster drills his singers for months to impress a visiting count who may not care to hear them.
A peasant asks every authority he can find to free his convicted brother, but no one can tell him where justice actually resides.
After a ball, a wealthy manufacturer drinks through the night and confesses that money has made every relationship feel bought.
A self-assured critic and his widowed sister grow apart when her search for moral certainty challenges his literary convictions.
A scholar hires a French teacher to advance his research, but discovers that attraction is much easier than conjugation.
Two childhood friends reunite warmly at a railway station until one learns the other’s official rank.
A seasoned prosecutor discovers that reasoning with his seven-year-old son is harder than addressing any court.
A minor journalist turns one night’s writing into a sacred ordeal, forcing his household to serve the drama of his creativity.
A merchant who signed bank audits he never read cannot understand why the law treats carelessness as complicity.
A colonel’s widow demands protection from a scandalous hotel guest, then learns one detail that changes her view.
While servants play cards in a dark coach-house, a lodger dies nearby and an old tale turns a child’s unease into terror.
In a weary provincial courtroom, a peasant faces a murder charge while officials move through justice as if following a machine.
A wealthy village family's corrupt business and private rivalries draw a poor young bride into a struggle over money, conscience, and power.
A minor clerk bursts home ecstatic that his name has appeared in print, whatever the reason.
A school director promises a disabled teacher a lifeline, then discovers how quickly principle yields to well-connected pressure.
A homeopathic healer’s grateful patients praise miraculous cures before mentioning their urgent material needs.
Two men look up at a flock of starlings, and an entire town manufactures a crisis around their gaze.
A grieving cabman carries strangers through the snowy city, searching among them for someone willing to hear about his son.
After an evening of ghost stories, a rational architect finds that a dark, empty house is more than his nerves can bear.
Returning to his changed hometown, an aging architect confronts the cost of a divorce he once left others to arrange.
