A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
Where does the story take place?
Nine years after a joyful summer confession, a wealthy woman measures the life she let class and hesitation decide for her.
A wealthy lover tries to settle an adulterous triangle with cash, only to discover that affection cannot be bought.
A married woman tries to end a friend’s pursuit, only to discover that her principles are less secure than his attention makes them seem.
A failed hunting trip brings a ruined prince to the edge of an estate owned by the wealthy woman he once refused to marry.
A solitary landowner explains how love entered his friends’ household and remained unspoken while duty and hesitation consumed the years.
An idle landscape painter befriends two sisters and finds love complicated by a fierce argument over art, work, and social duty.
On a Black Sea steamer, a disillusioned landowner recounts how his worship of a beautiful neighbor drew him across Europe.
Returning to her family estate, a young heiress finds the freedom of the steppe at odds with the narrow life waiting for her at home.
An impoverished landowner lectures a promising guest on aristocratic superiority while his daughters wait for a chance to speak.
An anonymous love letter sends a respectable married man to a garden rendezvous, where an unexpected rival refuses to leave.
Minutes after his only child dies, a doctor is summoned to another household and must weigh private grief against professional duty.
A visit to his brother’s long-dreamed-of estate forces a traveler to ask what private happiness costs those left outside it.
A Russian landowner’s casual nationalism turns a meal with his dependent French companion into an ordeal of insult and control.
A nervous wife sees a man enter through the kitchen window and sends her sleepy husband into the dark to defend the household’s virtue.
A homeopathic healer’s grateful patients praise miraculous cures before mentioning their urgent material needs.
A young officer visits an unconventional distillery owner to collect a debt and finds his principles tested by her unsettling charm.
When his sister leaves home for a married neighbor, a self-described liberal rides out to settle the scandal and tests his own beliefs.
A weary court official reaches his summer villa hungry for dinner and rest, only to find that family life has no place ready for him.
A penniless painter prepares to leave his summer lodging while dreaming of fame and avoiding the young woman who believes in his future.
A landowner confides his fear that ordinary life is incomprehensible, unaware that his closest friend desires his wife.
A banker’s reckless wager condemns a young lawyer to fifteen years of voluntary solitude for a fortune.
A chorus girl opens her door to her lover’s desperate wife and is made to answer for money she never received and choices she did not make.
One accidental kiss awakens a shy officer’s hope that his ordinary life might contain love after all.
A widow’s annual temperance luncheon drives her respectable guests to increasingly elaborate errands.
