A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How the prose reads.
A rural postman, primed by a grisly newspaper report, hears screams behind shuttered windows and races to stop a crime.
A hard Norman farmer faces a Prussian court-martial and calmly explains why enemy scouts have been vanishing.
A poor clerk spends a rare bonus on a grand family outing and a hired horse meant to restore his aristocratic dignity.
A frightened countess helps a wounded stranger cross a border, beginning a wordless bond neither dares disturb.
A thrifty Norman widow takes in a small dog, then discovers that protecting her property carries an unwelcome cost.
An imperious old maid’s final illness exposes the private life she never allowed anyone to see.
A servant tried for killing her newborn asks the court to hear how careful plans for motherhood collapsed in one night.
A lifelong sportsman considers marriage at fifty, then travels to Paris to test whether neglect has left him unfit for it.
A young marquise determined to escape her jealous husband hires an expert accomplice to produce evidence no court can ignore.
Bullied because he has no father, a village boy asks a kindly blacksmith to give him a name his classmates cannot mock.
A farm servant’s brief romance leaves her facing motherhood, secrecy, and a marriage shaped by work, fear, and rural necessity.
A dying woman hires an advocate to find the son who vanished after discovering the secret at the center of her household.
A lavish wedding breakfast paid for by an estranged daughter turns awkward when the groom chooses the wrong song.
After his parents die, a blind farmhand becomes the target of a household’s escalating cruelty in rural Normandy.
Three drunken artists in military costumes capture a burglar and turn his arrest into an improvised campaign.
In a fashionable Paris salon, the privilege of cutting a brioche marks favor, rivalry, and the changing fortunes of its celebrated hostess.
After forty years of silence, an aging woman walks across Normandy to see the son she was forced to surrender after a secret affair.
A country doctor recounts the lifelong devotion of an itinerant chair mender to a village chemist.
A doctor’s defense of a desperate mother leads him to recount a widow’s struggle with pregnancy and public shame.
On his wedding night, a reformed libertine receives an urgent summons that brings his abandoned past into his new marriage.
A doctor’s attempt to protect a newborn at a Breton christening collides with custom, cold, and drink.
A lonely Parisian seeking company for the night hears a noise behind a hidden door in a sex worker’s rented room.
After burying a man celebrated for his honesty, his children open a private confession that forces them to choose between truth and family honor.
An austere officer returns from maneuvers burdened by one lapse and insists on confessing it to his far more worldly wife.
