A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
After fifteen years apart, a Parisian visits an old friend and finds domestic contentment masking a disturbing family amusement.
When a timid civil servant’s elderly mother is declared dead, grief soon competes with inheritance, office protocol, and his wife’s practical schemes.
A childless couple’s expected inheritance comes with one condition, turning marital respectability into a desperate financial problem.
On New Year's Eve, a married woman asks her lover to prove whether his promises can survive a choice with real consequences.
A narrator studying a famously irresistible man finds the strongest clue to his charm in a woman’s portrait at home.
Two sheltered brothers discover Parisian freedom until their formidable priest uncle arrives at the worst possible hour.
A newlywed tells his oldest friend that marital passion is ruining his health, then finds an arrangement that restores him.
A visitor to an asylum reads the journal of a collector whose antique cabinet concealed a relic that consumed his mind and desire.
A doctor explains how a married woman, a dead lover, and an imminent homecoming demanded instant deception.
A married woman’s secret meetings are repeatedly interrupted by the toddler who sleeps in the next room.
A doctor’s attempt to awaken an intellectually disabled girl’s mind leads her family into a marriage that makes affection another form of confinement.
A faithless husband grows jealous when his independent wife attracts attention, and she answers his renewed desire with a price.
A charming idler marries a wealthy Englishwoman and devises a careful scheme to preserve both his allowance and his affairs.
A lonely Parisian’s plan for a generous Christmas supper with a stranger develops an alarming complication before bedtime.
A wealthy idler devotes himself to earning the red ribbon he has coveted since childhood, despite having done nothing to deserve it.
A trusted servant attacks his master for money, then becomes the most devoted nurse the wounded man could ask for.
Lonely and aging, a Parisian baron travels south to meet the grown son he secretly supported but has never seen.
A letter from a former lover forces an aging bachelor to compare his remembered youth with the man he has become.
A dying Norman farmer entrusts his son with an address, a secret household, and an obligation no legal will records.
A confirmed bachelor plans to marry a near stranger because one empty armchair has made solitude unbearable.
Two tipsy noblewomen trade secrets, and one boasts of turning a servant’s devotion into summer entertainment.
A man asks his doctor whether reason has led him to an invisible world—or into madness.
In an asylum, a beautiful woman hides imaginary scars while a doctor explains the guilt behind her delusion.
At a Twelfth Night dinner, a guest asks how the household’s quiet companion came to live there and what her place has cost her.
