A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
Facing lunch with a boastful rival, a woman rents a garden grand enough to silence her—and needs a story when the scenery vanishes.
A nervous visitor hears why his hostess keeps a window open—and then sees the impossible approaching across the lawn.
A cheerful rider stops at a lonely house and offers hope to a proud family whose silence conceals a different kind of loss.
A hostess screens every guest for dangerous opinions, yet two perfectly matched men still find one question worth fighting over.
A baroness stages a Greek tragedy to reconcile political enemies, but rehearsals create divisions of their own.
A city-weary lodger seeks peace on a remote farm, only to find its quiet ruled by two old women’s vindictive spells.
After killing a beloved cat, an amiable neighbor discovers that three silent children have designed a penance of their own.
A reluctant hostess turns a demanded political lunch into a carefully staged case of mistaken identity.
A contented Chelsea wife sets out to brighten a stranger’s life, only to discover how quickly benevolence can become appetite.
A theatrically tragic wife finds the perfect gloomy pond for her darkest fantasies, while reality keeps refusing to follow her script.
A Viennese café oracle who worships great powers reads news that the Balkan states have overturned his confident world.
A missing baby, a faith healer, and an identical child turn a family search into a problem no miracle has prepared anyone to solve.
To save a poor tenant's quince tree, Vera links her cottage to a stolen treasure and one very respectable fiancé.
Clovis accepts a wager to write a grand imperial poem, armed with a fountain pen, geographic guesswork, and total confidence.
A caricature makes a quiet bachelor fear he has grown like his parrot—just as a very different pet enters his home.
After a lunchtime quarrel, Egbert tries to end his wife’s prolonged silence while the household animals look on.
When a rich, boastful cousin flaunts an expensive fur, Margaret Sangrail turns tea, fashion, and invention into a private market.
A park-bench beggar tries to tell his story to a stranger who insists on supplying the better fiction.
A compassionate stone saint finds a silver coin and discovers that charity may be less convenient than prestige.
Mistaken for a governess, Lady Carlotta accepts the role and tests a fashionable theory of making history vivid for children.
A solemn expert on church architecture is overheard declaring love to “Florrie,” and Clovis uncovers a scandal no one imagined.
A couple welcomes a rich cousin reputed to steal, then makes a disastrous discovery inside his locked suitcase.
A dull commuter wins attention with an invented tale, then discovers the cost of becoming known as a liar.
A practical errand becomes evidence in a comic argument that going shopping and actually buying something are not the same.
