A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
A family council debates whether to shield a privileged young forger, while the accused listens and decides what kind of man he is.
A harmless sound in a wedding kitchen convinces a schoolmaster that scandal is about to ruin him.
A respectable official finds a bundled baby on his doorstep and assumes his secret affair has finally caught up with him.
A betrayed husband enters a gun shop with murder in mind, but every purchase forces him to reconsider the price of revenge.
A village choirmaster drills his singers for months to impress a visiting count who may not care to hear them.
A minor clerk bursts home ecstatic that his name has appeared in print, whatever the reason.
A dressmaker’s daughter shops for trimmings while a devoted clerk warns that the student she loves may never treat her as an equal.
One accidental sneeze sends a timid clerk into an escalating panic over rank, manners, and official displeasure.
An accomplished engineer complains that the public knows performers and criminals better than builders and scholars—until his seatmate tests the claim.
A vain provincial actor’s boast about a conquest turns dangerous when one listener knows the woman and demands satisfaction.
A small-town mayor sees a visiting Persian dignitary as his best chance to acquire the decoration he covets.
A provincial household prepares for a high-ranking uncle whose summer visit unsettles its routines, loyalties, and ideas about cultivated life.
A boy discovers his governess’s secret romance and learns how much power a whispered threat can hold.
A man becomes a social celebrity by making his nose the subject of a supposedly learned science.
A solemn student prankster tests a famous duelist’s pride with an insult designed to turn etiquette against him.
A connoisseur leads his insulter down into the family catacombs to settle a score over a rare sherry.
A curious narrator searches for the secret behind a celebrated war hero whose perfect appearance seems too complete to be natural.
A proud newspaper editor answers a rival's insult with a paragraph built around one letter, then the type runs out.
A veteran boxer plans to lose the fight that will end his career—but keeping the money may demand one last act of courage.
A boy follows his jockey father through the racecourses of Italy and France, learning to love the horses, the crowds, and the man who rides them.
A doctor’s claim to some driftwood is challenged by the lumberman who knows exactly where the logs came from.
An aging bullfighter takes a cheap night fight in Madrid, determined to prove that the old skill and courage are still in him.
In a Corsican mountain pass, a traveller hears how a timid orphan became the island’s most feared outlaw.
A celebrated society marksman provokes a duel, then spends a sleepless night confronting the fear his reputation cannot admit.
