A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
A confident Parisian explains how two carefully scheduled affairs collapsed through a silent exchange of pins in his bedroom.
A marquise arrives laughing with a secret: she has chosen a direct revenge on her jealous, abusive husband.
A bored baroness copies a window signal she sees across the street and discovers that curiosity can be taken as a business offer.
A reluctant traveler bound for Italy meets an aloof young woman whose sudden proposal reshapes his carefully planned holiday.
A duel between two dragoons reveals the secret arrangement of a widow known for piety and strict respectability.
A smug husband decides he would recognize any sign of adultery and devises a test that may prove more than he wants to know.
A miserly woman refuses to replace her husband’s ruined umbrella—until an insurance policy suggests a way to avoid paying.
A Parisian libertine becomes consumed by a stranger whose identity remains beyond his reach.
A suitor under constant observation begins a secret affair, then mistakes the wrong woman at a château window.
An anticlerical village joiner wants a lucrative church contract, but the parish priest sets a spiritual price for the work.
A ferry passenger learns why an old friend’s marriage soured after his once-enchanting English bride became easier to understand.
A chance meeting in a beer hall reveals why a once-privileged schoolmate has spent his adult life drinking at the same table.
An exhausted French detachment facing a deadly winter march finds unexpected resolve after taking two civilians under its protection.
An ardent love letter receives a meticulous reply from a man who finds romantic language more dangerous to desire than silence.
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.
When an ostrich supposedly swallows a priceless diamond aboard ship, five ordinary birds become the stakes in an escalating auction.
A stranded collector hatches an extinct giant bird on a lonely atoll and gains a companion that keeps growing.
A vain minor poet mistakes his hunger for inspiration for a grand passion when a young admirer takes his rhetoric seriously.
A shipwreck survivor in a diving suit is mistaken for a god, but keeping up the role may cost him the treasure he came to recover.
On a carefully cultivated tour of Rome, a refined schoolteacher meets an ideal companion—until one social detail tests her affection.
A young builder finds a chest of silver beneath his fiancée’s garden and discovers that getting rich is harder than finding treasure.
A mild schoolmaster tests his courage with a harmless mock burglary and stumbles into a real criminal escape.
A village shop assistant returns from three missing weeks with ashes in his pockets and a love he cannot explain or forget.
