A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
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.
An eloquent abbot leaves his desert monastery to condemn the city’s sins, then discovers how seductive a warning can become.
A writer tends a wounded widower beside his wife’s coffin and listens as he tries to explain a despair he cannot explain to himself.
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.
Fresh from Crimea, a young wife condemns her companion’s holiday flirtation while describing her own trip in increasingly revealing detail.
A failed hunting trip brings a ruined prince to the edge of an estate owned by the wealthy woman he once refused to marry.
Sheltering from a storm, a fearful forester says wicked men frighten him more than wild beasts—then a cry comes from outside.
A wealthy factory owner spends Christmas confronting the distance between her good intentions, her workers, and the life she longs to lead.
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 married young woman crosses the river at night to meet an idle village watchman, knowing the morning will demand an answer.
A strong old actor falls ill far from home, while his theatrical companions mistake remedies and affection for understanding.
A driver recalls how his little sister carried a village’s money through a forest after robbers attacked their father.
An idle landscape painter befriends two sisters and finds love complicated by a fierce argument over art, work, and social duty.
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.
