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Beneath the stars of the steppe, shepherds and an overseer trade legends of treasure and wonder what happiness might be.
Returning to his changed hometown, an aging architect confronts the cost of a divorce he once left others to arrange.
An impoverished old man can no longer feed the horse and dog that depend on him, yet neither anger nor dismissal can break their attachment.
After nearly six thousand years of immortality, a man who wants to die attempts a radical cure: rebuilding the world of his childhood.
A veteran boxer plans to lose the fight that will end his career—but keeping the money may demand one last act of courage.
An aging bullfighter takes a cheap night fight in Madrid, determined to prove that the old skill and courage are still in him.
After fifteen years apart, a Parisian visits an old friend and finds domestic contentment masking a disturbing family amusement.
A traveler in the Auvergne keeps meeting a solitary old woman whose grief finally breaks through her reserve.
After forty years in the same dim office, an aging bookkeeper takes a spring evening walk and sees the life he never lived.
An eighty-six-year-old health fanatic studies every local death, determined to prove that caution can defeat old age.
Lonely and aging, a Parisian baron travels south to meet the grown son he secretly supported but has never seen.
A man who believes himself untouched by age meets the woman he once adored and sees twelve lost years all at once.
A letter from a former lover forces an aging bachelor to compare his remembered youth with the man he has become.
An aging actress welcomes a traveler into the flower-covered villa where she lives with portraits of the men who loved her.
In a quiet Paris garden, a young law student befriends two forgotten dancers who still inhabit the manners of another century.
An aging bachelor revisits the one love he never declared and asks the question that could make his quiet life seem wasted.
Alone in the house of her whole life, an elderly woman writes to a friend about memory, aging, and the objects that preserve vanished lives.
A lifelong sportsman considers marriage at fifty, then travels to Paris to test whether neglect has left him unfit for it.
In a fashionable Paris salon, the privilege of cutting a brioche marks favor, rivalry, and the changing fortunes of its celebrated hostess.
A masked dancer collapses at a Paris ball, and the face beneath his disguise leads a doctor into a marriage shaped by vanity and endurance.
An aging sportsman keeps hunting season alive through elaborate dinners, improbable anecdotes, and one coveted delicacy.
A racing tide traps an insurance inspector and an English family on a wreck, creating a New Year he never forgets.
A poor medical student accepts an old philosopher’s inheritance offer and wakes to find that far more than a name has changed hands.
A self-proclaimed 228-year-old gentleman recalls evenings with Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and their sharp-tongued London circle.
