A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The narrator’s attitude toward the story.
A physiologist’s new stimulant speeds thought and movement so radically that the outside world seems frozen in time.
A chemistry accident sends an ordinary schoolmaster into a shadow world that overlaps the lives of everyone he knew.
A confident clubman claims he helped a hapless ghost vanish, then agrees to demonstrate the spirit’s strange hand gestures.
A mediocre painter watches his portrait acquire a devilish expression—and then hears the canvas criticize his art.
An obese clubman demands an old family remedy for losing weight, only to discover how literally the recipe works.
Two men debate whether any horror is truly beyond description while sitting beside the grave linked to a local legend.
A Wall Street copyist answers every request with "I would prefer not to" — and never leaves.
An artist wants to sketch a Cajun fisherman, but the man's daughter worries how strangers will portray him.
With her husband away at war, a lonely young wife grows close to a visiting neighbor.
A woman estranged from her son takes in a sick child after a family party.
A farmer goes to a country ball to escape indecision about marriage and meets a woman with plans of her own.
With Christmas near, a plantation household searches in the rain for three missing turkeys.
A shopkeeper spends his earnings on his sister's hopes of becoming an opera singer.
A wet and hungry prankster turns up at a lonely doctor's door during a storm.
After emancipation, Aunt Peggy asks for a quiet cabin where she can spend her final days.
A plantation worker sets out for a week of visiting and stops at a sick boy's cabin.
Babette may visit her cousins when the figs ripen, and she watches the trees each day.
A little girl offers lilies to a furious neighbor after her calf damages his crops.
A king's cruel rhyme inspires his sister to prove a missing lady's fidelity.
A traveling journalist arrives in supposedly uneventful Nashville and discovers that its quiet streets conceal tangled loyalties and danger.
A celebrated safecracker tries to build an honest life under a new name, but his old skills are not finished with him.
A young man sends a street boy to plead his case to the woman who has forbidden him to write or speak to her.
A millionaire father bets that money can solve his son's romantic dilemma, while the young lover searches for one uninterrupted moment.
A yellow dog surveys his unhappy New York home and decides that he and his henpecked master both deserve a better life.
