A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
The narrator’s attitude toward the story.
An orphan girl races through an approaching storm to find a kindly cobbler who can free her brother from a hollow tree.
A drunken father asks his patient son for money, then confesses every lie without finding the strength to stop repeating them.
Nine years after a joyful summer confession, a wealthy woman measures the life she let class and hesitation decide for her.
A sensitive law student joins two friends on a tour of Moscow brothels and finds himself unable to accept their practiced indifference.
A failed hunting trip brings a ruined prince to the edge of an estate owned by the wealthy woman he once refused to marry.
A solitary landowner explains how love entered his friends’ household and remained unspoken while duty and hesitation consumed the years.
A driver recalls how his little sister carried a village’s money through a forest after robbers attacked their father.
Weeks before her wedding, a young woman begins to see her comfortable provincial life—and the future chosen for her—with new clarity.
A peasant asks every authority he can find to free his convicted brother, but no one can tell him where justice actually resides.
Escorted through autumn mud, a nameless tramp describes the free Siberian life he hopes awaits him beyond prison.
On Easter night, a ferry monk mourns the gentle hymn writer whose words the celebrating monastery never learned to value.
Minutes after his only child dies, a doctor is summoned to another household and must weigh private grief against professional duty.
At an Epiphany fête, three prosperous old men recall what severe cold meant before wealth protected them from it.
A visit to his brother’s long-dreamed-of estate forces a traveler to ask what private happiness costs those left outside it.
Beneath the stars of the steppe, shepherds and an overseer trade legends of treasure and wonder what happiness might be.
A seasoned prosecutor discovers that reasoning with his seven-year-old son is harder than addressing any court.
A grieving cabman carries strangers through the snowy city, searching among them for someone willing to hear about his son.
Stranded by a blizzard beside a suicide, a young magistrate begins to see the hidden ties between official duty and human suffering.
Snowbound at a roadside tavern on Christmas Eve, a young landowner hears how a ruined idealist’s convictions consumed his life.
A dressmaker’s daughter shops for trimmings while a devoted clerk warns that the student she loves may never treat her as an equal.
Two chance encounters with remarkable young women leave a traveler pondering why beauty can bring as much sadness as delight.
A lawyer catches a beggar lying, offers him work, and assumes stern advice is enough to restore a life.
On Easter morning, a newly married farmer passes a sick soldier on the road and cannot quiet his conscience afterward.
On the road to an inquest, a magistrate challenges a doctor to explain a healthy woman’s precisely foretold death.
