A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
What would you like to read about?
A drunken father asks his patient son for money, then confesses every lie without finding the strength to stop repeating them.
A tipsy bridegroom regales a railway compartment with his philosophy of happiness while searching for the coach where his new wife waits.
A wealthy lover tries to settle an adulterous triangle with cash, only to discover that affection cannot be bought.
A married woman tries to end a friend’s pursuit, only to discover that her principles are less secure than his attention makes them seem.
A comfortable reformer judges a village priest unfit for service, then learns what hunger looks like when pride tries to hide it.
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 wealthy factory owner spends Christmas confronting the distance between her good intentions, her workers, and the life she longs to lead.
After an opera, a sixteen-year-old tries to turn two admirers into the material for her first grand romantic sorrow.
A betrayed husband enters a gun shop with murder in mind, but every purchase forces him to reconsider the price of revenge.
A self-dramatizing widow offers a young writer the tragic story of her life aboard a train.
A sober, pious man steals a midnight drink, swallows paraffin instead, and spends the night preparing for death.
On a Black Sea steamer, a disillusioned landowner recounts how his worship of a beautiful neighbor drew him across Europe.
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.
An anonymous love letter sends a respectable married man to a garden rendezvous, where an unexpected rival refuses to leave.
Five rainy days without her husband send a devoted young wife into town, where his empty flat raises an unwelcome question.
At a remote railway station on New Year’s Eve, a bored official dares fate to prove that his life can still become worse.
A self-assured critic and his widowed sister grow apart when her search for moral certainty challenges his literary convictions.
A scholar hires a French teacher to advance his research, but discovers that attraction is much easier than conjugation.
A self-declared man of violent temper tries to study dog licences while a determined young woman assigns him a romance.
A visit to his brother’s long-dreamed-of estate forces a traveler to ask what private happiness costs those left outside it.
A minor journalist turns one night’s writing into a sacred ordeal, forcing his household to serve the drama of his creativity.
A merchant who signed bank audits he never read cannot understand why the law treats carelessness as complicity.
