A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
On a dangerous night ride, a cavalry officer finds a missing trooper standing beside a fallen horse.
A Union picket officer fears a corpse more than the enemy near his position.
A stranger at a desert campfire tells how four prospectors were trapped in a cave thirty years earlier.
On a black, wind-lashed night, a cemetery watchman agrees to guide a lost pilgrim and begins to regret his kindness.
Sheltering from a storm, a fearful forester says wicked men frighten him more than wild beasts—then a cry comes from outside.
A solitary landowner explains how love entered his friends’ household and remained unspoken while duty and hesitation consumed the years.
After an evening of ghost stories, a rational architect finds that a dark, empty house is more than his nerves can bear.
A frightened surveyor invents a fearsome reputation to protect himself on a night journey—and makes his driver even more afraid.
A teacher terrified of disorder hides behind rules and routines, until a lively woman and her defiant brother disturb his sealed existence.
A timid traveler is mistaken for a space-polo expert, then forced into a deadly match with his ship and reputation at stake.
A mild bookkeeper’s quiet tour of the Solar System turns him into an asteroid-town marshal with an alien beast for backup.
A Norwegian fisherman explains how careful observation saved him when a hurricane swept his boat into the Maelström.
Condemned by the Inquisition, a prisoner must understand each new torture before darkness, a hidden pit, and a descending blade kill him.
A veteran boxer plans to lose the fight that will end his career—but keeping the money may demand one last act of courage.
In a Milan hospital after the fighting, wounded soldiers submit their bodies to machines while trying to imagine who they will be afterward.
War, revolution, bullfights, and executions flash past in hard-edged scenes where courage and brutality become nearly indistinguishable.
A young Hungarian revolutionary crosses postwar Italy with no money, a party credential, and an unwavering faith in the world revolution.
An aging bullfighter takes a cheap night fight in Madrid, determined to prove that the old skill and courage are still in him.
After the crucifixion, three Roman soldiers drink, joke, and circle the question of what it means to endure suffering.
News of the Republic reaches a Norman village, where a self-important doctor turns national upheaval into a personal campaign for office.
A celebrated society marksman provokes a duel, then spends a sleepless night confronting the fear his reputation cannot admit.
A peaceable French merchant endures a Prussian officer’s insults until one final humiliation forces him to fight.
When a grandmother asks a gentle priest why he chose solitude, he recalls the childhood attachment that taught him to fear ordinary happiness.
A childhood memory of an old seamstress opens onto the secret act of courage that shaped her entire life.
