A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The narrator’s attitude toward the story.
A mining camp hangs a murderer, but the crowd is unprepared when the body is lowered.
At a solemn funeral, the widow looks once more through the coffin glass and screams.
Three grave robbers open a coffin on a stormy night and find its occupant sitting up.
Alone in a deserted mining camp, Hiram Beeson waits each night for a visitor from beneath his floor.
On a black, wind-lashed night, a cemetery watchman agrees to guide a lost pilgrim and begins to regret his kindness.
A frightened schoolboy’s failed Greek exam becomes a family crisis about poverty, ambition, and punishment.
A polite writer grants an aspiring dramatist half an hour to read her work and discovers that she has brought five acts.
A sheltered young woman mistakes theatrical passion for real love and follows a touring actor into his brutal world.
A strong old actor falls ill far from home, while his theatrical companions mistake remedies and affection for understanding.
An impoverished landowner lectures a promising guest on aristocratic superiority while his daughters wait for a chance to speak.
At a remote railway station on New Year’s Eve, a bored official dares fate to prove that his life can still become worse.
After a ball, a wealthy manufacturer drinks through the night and confesses that money has made every relationship feel bought.
A Russian landowner’s casual nationalism turns a meal with his dependent French companion into an ordeal of insult and control.
A wet graveyard walk leads to an actor drinking beside the neglected grave of the man who shaped and ruined his life.
An eight-year-old starving on a Moscow street fixates on a restaurant sign and an unknown food called oysters.
While Easter bells summon the city outside, an impoverished clerk spends another holiday night trapped in a smoky office.
One accidental sneeze sends a timid clerk into an escalating panic over rank, manners, and official displeasure.
On Christmas Eve, a resentful shoemaker meets a strange customer and gets a chance to trade poverty for wealth.
A hunted mutant slips past Pluto’s quarantine and finds a dead scientist, a false disaster, and a doorway to a world remembered only in nightmares.
A cook who considers himself a great philosopher receives a visit from the Devil and tries to bargain away his soul.
A captive court jester must design one more masquerade for the king who treats him and his friend as property.
Two drunken sailors enter a plague-sealed London district and interrupt a grotesque court meeting in an undertaker’s shop.
Toby Dammit's habit of betting the Devil his head becomes literal when a stranger accepts the wager at a covered bridge.
A vain French duke dies over a badly served delicacy and challenges the Devil to a card game for his freedom.
