A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
A Paris office clerk explains how one disastrous Sunday cured him of the country—and of marriage.
A thrifty Norman widow takes in a small dog, then discovers that protecting her property carries an unwelcome cost.
A boastful Norman farmer turns the Prussian soldier billeted with him into a local joke, until humiliation becomes dangerous.
Bullied because he has no father, a village boy asks a kindly blacksmith to give him a name his classmates cannot mock.
A shopkeeper’s unwanted kiss becomes a scandal, and the charming friend sent to repair it proves no model of restraint.
A country doctor recounts the lifelong devotion of an itinerant chair mender to a village chemist.
A doctor’s attempt to protect a newborn at a Breton christening collides with custom, cold, and drink.
A law student turns a murderer’s preserved hand into a bell pull, dismissing every warning until terror enters his locked room.
Years after an abusive fisherman vanishes at sea, his widow hears his commanding voice return inside her quiet home.
On a storm-lashed Norman night, a fisherman’s friend keeps filling his glass while someone waits at the drunkard’s home.
An Indian prince’s cremation beneath the cliffs of Étretat confronts a French resort town with an unfamiliar rite.
An innkeeper buys a stubborn widow’s farm on a life annuity, then grows impatient when she remains stubbornly healthy.
During the Prussian occupation, an officer mistakes a grieving woman’s immobility for defiance and decides to punish her.
A respected village priest receives a ragged visitor whose face and faded photograph reopen the betrayal that drove him into the Church.
A stolen farm rabbit sends two pleased policemen after a suspect whose hiding place exposes more than one rural offense.
A stranger’s watchful presence unsettles a fisherman’s household until his identity forces the family to reconsider every bond within it.
A coastal place-name preserves the story of an austere village priest whose hatred of desire turns violent on a storm-beaten cliff.
A frugal Norman peasant picks up a scrap of string on market day and finds that a harmless act can destroy a man’s reputation.
An unemployed carpenter walks from town to town seeking work until hunger and official suspicion drive him toward collapse.
A poor, naïve farm girl enters service with a wealthy widower whose demands soon extend far beyond cooking and cleaning.
An anticlerical village joiner wants a lucrative church contract, but the parish priest sets a spiritual price for the work.
A chance encounter in a provincial tobacco shop revives a vanished world of river outings, hard work, and ingenious schemes.
A bedridden tavern keeper’s furious wife finds an outrageous way to make him useful.
A sighted mountaineer falls into an isolated valley where blindness is universal—and learns that his advantage has no accepted meaning.
