A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
A boy follows his jockey father through the racecourses of Italy and France, learning to love the horses, the crowds, and the man who rides them.
A young couple follows a drunken local guide out of Cortina for an illegal trout-fishing trip that keeps slipping further out of reach.
A boy’s holiday glow collapses when his father reveals that the girl he loves has chosen someone else.
A young Hungarian revolutionary crosses postwar Italy with no money, a party credential, and an unwavering faith in the world revolution.
As an autumn storm lashes Michigan, Nick Adams and Bill drink by the fire and talk around the breakup Nick cannot quite explain.
A skeptical country doctor recalls the Christmas night when fear, faith, and illness combined to produce what others called a miracle.
A daring flirt makes her persistent admirer earn his chance during a wild-boar hunt at a Norman château.
A Parisian family’s summer outing opens a brief, charged interval between ordinary life and a happiness that cannot last.
A traveler in the Auvergne keeps meeting a solitary old woman whose grief finally breaks through her reserve.
A nostalgic former clerk recalls the sunny Sunday walk when helping a lost couple led him far from his map and his innocence.
A road trip through Normandy leads to a chapel keeper who sells homemade saints and measures his drunkenness by degrees.
On his wedding night, an ardent Norman sportsman must choose between his waiting bride and suspected poachers.
A sharp-tongued rail traveler records the sights, absurdities, and unsettling stories encountered along the French Riviera.
A landowner recalls forcing his pregnant servant into a marriage arranged to protect his own name.
A French settler in colonial Algeria recalls the restless woman whose freedom never fit the life he tried to give her.
A young Norman soldier asks his parents to judge the Black woman he hopes to marry on her character rather than her skin.
Ten travelers flee occupied Rouen, but their escape stalls when a Prussian officer makes one passenger’s body the price of everyone’s freedom.
A resentful farm boy assigned to care for an old horse turns an ordinary chore into a test of mercy.
A farm girl’s pregnancy forces her hard-nosed mother to weigh family honor against the price of a weekly coach ride.
A midnight train encounter leads two travelers through unsettling accounts of the dread inspired by things not yet understood.
A solitary walker falls in love with a seaside house—and with the unknown woman whose photograph hangs inside.
A dying Norman farmer entrusts his son with an address, a secret household, and an obligation no legal will records.
A wealthy, childless couple offers two poor farming families money and security in exchange for adopting a son.
A severe priest sets out to confront his niece’s secret lover, but the moonlit countryside challenges his certainty.
