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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.
Escorted through autumn mud, a nameless tramp describes the free Siberian life he hopes awaits him beyond prison.
At a remote Siberian ferry, a hardened exile tells a homesick young man that survival depends on wanting nothing.
A banker’s reckless wager condemns a young lawyer to fifteen years of voluntary solitude for a fortune.
A teacher terrified of disorder hides behind rules and routines, until a lively woman and her defiant brother disturb his sealed existence.
A jealous sexton blames his wife for every storm that sends a young traveler to their isolated hut.
Prescribed total rest in a nursery with barred windows, a young wife begins to study the wallpaper.
A captive court jester must design one more masquerade for the king who treats him and his friend as property.
Condemned by the Inquisition, a prisoner must understand each new torture before darkness, a hidden pit, and a descending blade kill him.
In a rainy Italian hotel, an American wife goes after a stray cat and discovers how many other things she wants.
Two young friends race down an Alpine mountain, then linger over wine as marriage, school, and the end of freedom wait for them below.
Confined to a couch, an invalid watches a distant manhunt as entertainment until the chase crosses the river and comes to his window.
A dying man escapes waking life's monotony through dreams of enchanted gardens and a bronze gate said to open onto a final realm.
A famous escape artist accepts a midnight invitation at Giza and wakes bound in a chamber far beneath the pyramids.
A sheltered poet marries a skilled occultist and begins to fear that she can force his mind out of his own body.
Eveline must decide whether to leave her family and sail away with the man she hopes to marry.
A new wife leaves her husband to find a life she can choose for herself.
A woman who has feared crossing the bayou since childhood must help a boy hurt on her side of it.
A traveler finds an old acquaintance trapped in an abusive marriage in a remote Louisiana cabin.
A Neapolitan officer's secret mission makes him a stranger to everyone he loves.
A grieving traveler follows an unexplained beacon to an abandoned Welsh tower.
Two bungling kidnappers discover that their captive is far more trouble than the ransom is worth.
After a catastrophic time-machine demonstration, an inventor is condemned to become the living pendulum of the device he built.
A freighter’s failed engine sends three incompatible crewmen out of the solar system with no ordinary route home.
24 stories
