A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
An orphan crosses the country and comes back to the town where his mother is buried.
A man hears a familiar tapping in a room where no one else can be.
A frightened schoolboy’s failed Greek exam becomes a family crisis about poverty, ambition, and punishment.
An orphan girl races through an approaching storm to find a kindly cobbler who can free her brother from a hollow tree.
Penniless after a hospital stay, a nightclub dancer visits an old admirer and finds that ordinary clothes have changed their acquaintance.
Nine years after a joyful summer confession, a wealthy woman measures the life she let class and hesitation decide for her.
A magistrate questions a peasant who cannot understand why taking one railway nut for a fishing weight is a crime.
A sensitive law student joins two friends on a tour of Moscow brothels and finds himself unable to accept their practiced indifference.
A comfortable reformer judges a village priest unfit for service, then learns what hunger looks like when pride tries to hide it.
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 wealthy factory owner spends Christmas confronting the distance between her good intentions, her workers, and the life she longs to lead.
An impoverished young bride enters a joyless marriage, then discovers that beauty can confer a power her husband never expected.
An impoverished young woman supports a medical student who treats her body, labor, and loyalty as conveniences.
An impoverished landowner lectures a promising guest on aristocratic superiority while his daughters wait for a chance to speak.
A barber learns midway through a free haircut that poverty has cost him the woman he loves.
A peasant asks every authority he can find to free his convicted brother, but no one can tell him where justice actually resides.
Escorted through autumn mud, a nameless tramp describes the free Siberian life he hopes awaits him beyond prison.
Minutes after his only child dies, a doctor is summoned to another household and must weigh private grief against professional duty.
A scholar hires a French teacher to advance his research, but discovers that attraction is much easier than conjugation.
Two childhood friends reunite warmly at a railway station until one learns the other’s official rank.
At an Epiphany fête, three prosperous old men recall what severe cold meant before wealth protected them from it.
A visit to his brother’s long-dreamed-of estate forces a traveler to ask what private happiness costs those left outside it.
A gravely ill soldier sails home from the Far East, sustained by memories of snow, family, and a village impossibly far away.
A wealthy village family's corrupt business and private rivalries draw a poor young bride into a struggle over money, conscience, and power.
