Hu Siniang
胡四娘
A penniless scholar marries the least-regarded daughter of a great house, and the whole family mocks the pair, calling her 'the noble lady' to her face. One maid even bets her eyes that the husband will never amount to anything.
The full index
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Pick a flavour: underdogs who turn the tables, villains who get what they deserve, clever schemes and strange tales.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
阿里巴巴和四十大盗
A poor woodcutter hiding in a tree hears forty robbers open a cave of treasure with two magic words. Taking a little gold is easy; keeping the secret from his greedy brother and from the robbers who come hunting is not.
Xi Fangping Sues Hell
席方平告阴状
When a rich enemy bribes the underworld's jailers to torture his dying father, Xi Fangping lets his soul leave his body and goes down to file a complaint. But the city god, the prefect and the King of the Underworld have all been paid off, and each answers his petition with worse torments than the last.
Arsène Lupin in Prison
狱中的亚森·罗平
A miserly baron in an island castle on the Seine receives a polite letter from the Santé prison: Arsène Lupin wants his paintings, and names the night he will come for them. The police laugh, the baron panics, and a famous detective on a fishing holiday reluctantly agrees to stand guard.
Hongyu
红玉
A poor scholar's happy marriage is shattered when a retired censor covets his wife, beats his father and carries her off, and every court refuses to hear his case. Then a bearded stranger he has never met walks in and asks why he has forgotten his revenge.
The Million-Pound Bank-Note
百万英镑
Stranded in London with nothing but rags, an American clerk is handed an envelope by two eccentric old brothers and finds inside a single banknote worth a million pounds. He cannot spend it, cannot change it and cannot explain it, and he has thirty days to survive on it.
Shang Sanguan
商三官
When a local bully's servants beat her scholar father to death, sixteen-year-old Shang Sanguan watches her brothers lose their lawsuit and talks them into burying him. The night after the funeral she vanishes without a trace, and half a year later a pretty young actor turns up at the bully's birthday feast.
The Escape of Arsène Lupin
亚森·罗平越狱记
Arsène Lupin announces from his cell that he will not be present at his own trial, and the police intercept secret notes hidden in a cigar and a hollow knife. They set a trap around a prison van, while all Paris waits to see how the gentleman-burglar will keep his word.
Jin Yunu Beats Her Heartless Husband
金玉奴棒打薄情郎
The beggar chief's daughter Jin Yunu pours her family's money into making her penniless scholar husband a success, and the day he becomes an official he starts to resent her low birth. On a moonlit night on the river, he decides there is only one way to be rid of the shame.
The Luckless Man and the Dongting Oranges
倒运汉巧遇洞庭红
Wen Ruoxu fails at everything he tries, and his friends chip in just one tael so he can tag along on a trading voyage. He spends it on a basket of cheap oranges and, stranded on a deserted island, drags back a giant tortoise shell that everyone laughs at.
Wang Cheng and the Fighting Quail
懒汉王成
Wang Cheng is so lazy his family has sunk into rags, until a lost gold hairpin brings him a fox spirit who once loved his grandfather. She stakes him to make his fortune in the capital, but rain, bad luck and a thief strip him of everything, leaving him with nothing but a single quail.
Xiaocui
小翠
Censor Wang's only son is hopelessly simple, until a mysterious woman leaves her laughing daughter Xiaocui at the door as his bride and never comes back. Xiaocui spends her days dressing her husband up and playing pranks, and one night she rides off in a minister's disguise straight to the gate of Wang's worst enemy.
The Sisters Who Swapped Bridegrooms
姊妹易嫁
A great family betroths its eldest daughter to a cowherd's orphaned son, and on the wedding day she sits weeping in a corner, refusing to dress while the drums play at the gate. Her little sister speaks up, and a family's fortunes start to turn.
The Archer Who Boasted
刘东山夸技顺城门
Liu Dongshan, the constable they call 'Chain-of-Pearls Arrow,' heads home with a hundred taels and loudly tells a crowded inn that no bandit alive could rob him. The next morning a charming young rider asks to share the road and wonders aloud how many outlaws the great man has caught.
The Mexican
墨西哥人
Nobody in the Mexican revolutionary Junta in Los Angeles likes Felipe Rivera, the silent scrub-boy with burning eyes who somehow keeps bringing them gold. When the Revolution needs five thousand dollars for guns in three weeks, he steps into the ring against Danny Ward, the crowd's darling, and demands that the winner take all.
The Tiger on the Mountain Path
向杲化虎
When a rich young bully beats Xiang Gao's brother to death and buys off the court, Xiang vows to kill him on the road. But his enemy now rides with a crack archer at his side, and only a strange storm on the mountain will give Xiang his chance.
The Red-Headed League
红发会
A stout London pawnbroker is hired by a mysterious League of Red-Headed Men to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica for four pounds a week, simply because of his flaming hair. Eight weeks later the office door is locked, the League is dissolved, and Sherlock Holmes suspects something far graver than a prank.
Fengxian
凤仙
A penniless young scholar wins the fox maiden Fengxian, but at a family reunion her father heaps favours on the rich son-in-law and her sister mocks her 'sour scholar' husband. Fengxian storms out, and on the road she hands her husband a mirror that will only show her face on one condition.
Magistrate Teng Settles an Estate with a Ghost
滕大尹鬼断家私
Old Prefect Ni signs his whole fortune over to his grasping elder son, leaving his young concubine and their little boy nothing but a painted portrait and a cryptic promise. Years later, the boy and his mother carry the scroll to a sharp-eyed new magistrate.
Ali Cogia and the Jar of Olives
阿里·科吉亚的橄榄罐
Before leaving on pilgrimage, a Bagdad merchant hides a thousand gold pieces under the olives in a jar and leaves it with a trusted friend. Seven years later he comes home to find the gold gone, the friend swearing innocence, and the judge on the friend’s side.
Gong Mengbi
宫梦弼
When the generous Liu family loses its fortune, every guest who feasted at its table disappears, and the bride's father slams the gate on the ragged young heir. Only one odd old friend ever seemed to care, and he left behind nothing but a habit of burying pebbles and throwing broken tiles into dark corners.
The Story of Keesh
基希的故事
Thirteen-year-old Keesh stands up in the tribal council to demand a fair share of meat for his widowed mother, and the hunters jeer him out. Then he starts dragging home whole polar bears alone, and the village whispers of witchcraft.
Big Sister Qiu
仇大娘
With the father carried off by bandits, a gambling son selling his wife and a scheming neighbour picking the family apart, the Qius are nearly ruined. Then the fierce half-sister everyone had written off comes home with a knife in her hand.
Geng Niang's Revenge
庚娘
Fleeing bandits with her husband's family, the beautiful Geng Niang warns him not to trust the eager young stranger who offers them a boat. That night among the reeds, she learns how right she was, and must decide how a lone woman can strike back.
Cui Meng
崔猛
Cui Meng cannot see an injustice without smashing it, and his mother tattoos a vermilion cross on his arm to make him stop. Then a local bully steals a poor man's wife through a rigged gambling debt, right in front of him.
Tian Qilang
田七郎
A dream tells the wealthy Wu Chengxiu that of all his many friends, only a poor hunter named Tian Qilang would stand by him in trouble. But Qilang's mother wants nothing to do with Wu's gifts, warning that the rich repay with money, the poor with loyalty.
The Valiant Little Tailor
勇敢的小裁缝
A little tailor swats seven flies at one blow and stitches the boast onto his belt. Giants, soldiers and a king all read it as seven men, and the king starts sending him on jobs no one comes back from.
Yun Cuixian
云翠仙
A penniless pedlar sweet-talks his way into marrying the beautiful Yun Cuixian, and her family's gifts lift him into easy comfort. Then a gambling crony tells him how much she would fetch, and he starts to think.
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
米尔沃顿
Charles Augustus Milverton buys compromising letters and squeezes his victims dry, and now he holds the letters that could wreck a young lady's wedding. When bargaining fails, Holmes and Watson put on masks and break into his house at midnight.
The Military Graduate
武孝廉
Coughing blood and robbed by his own servant, a military graduate is left to die on a canal boat until a gracious older woman revives him with a single pill and funds his rise to office. Once he wears an official's cap, he takes a young wife, changes his route, and hopes she will never find him.
The Blue Cross
蓝色十字架
The great detective Valentin crosses to London hunting Flambeau, the giant master thief of Europe, with no clue at all except to follow anything odd. And London is suddenly full of odd things: salt in the sugar bowl, soup thrown at a wall, and two clergymen, one tall and one short.
The Ugly Fox
丑狐
A freezing, penniless scholar accepts the favors of a fox spirit who is as ugly as she is generous, and within a year his family lives in silk. When her gifts begin to shrink, he hires a sorcerer to paint a charm on his door and drive her away.
The Master-Thief
神偷
A long-lost son drives home in a splendid carriage and confesses to his poor parents that he has become a master-thief. His godfather the count gives him three impossible tasks to prove it: fail, and he hangs.
Immortals' Island
仙人岛
Wang Mian has topped every examination and mocked everyone who crossed him, so when a Daoist claims to be an immortal, he laughs in his face. One flight on a scaly staff and one fall into the sea later, he is a guest on an island of immortals, eager to show his hosts what a real genius sounds like.
Poor Ma Zhou and the Cake-Seller
穷马周遭际卖䭔媪
Ma Zhou is brilliant, broke and always drunk; his own prefect shames him in the street, so he throws back his robe of office and walks to Chang'an with nothing. There he lodges with a cake-selling widow who once had a strange dream about a white horse.
The Purloined Letter
失窃的信
A scandalous letter has been stolen from the royal apartments by the ruthless Minister D——, who is using it to blackmail its owner. The Paris police have searched his house down to the last square inch with needles and microscopes, and the Prefect comes to Dupin baffled.
The Concubine Who Beat the Robbers
妾杖击贼
In a rich household, the gentle young concubine is whipped and bullied by the principal wife and never once complains. Then one night a gang of robbers comes over the wall and starts smashing the door.
Martial Skill
武技
Li Chao trains for three months under a wandering Shaolin monk and decides there is nothing left to learn. Famous from north to south, he steps into a street ring in Jinan where a slender young nun is asking only for a friendly bout.
Shearing the Wolf
剪狼毛
Grifters Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker are resting in a Kentucky mountain town when its most respectable merchant shows them a counterfeit-money swindle letter and announces he will beat the crooks at their own game. The partners decide, for the sake of conscience, to travel to Chicago with him and stop the deal.
Miao Sheng
苗生
A huge, coarse stranger named Miao forces drinks on a snobbish scholar, then carries the man's sick horse twenty li on his shoulders. When he turns up again at the scholars' picnic on Mount Hua, they insist on reciting their verses and essays to him anyway.
Zhao Bosheng Meets the Emperor in a Teahouse
赵伯升茶肆遇仁宗
Zhao Xu writes the best examination paper in the empire, but when the emperor faults one character he argues back and is struck off the list. A year later, ragged and stranded in the capital, he still writes poems on teahouse walls, while in the palace the emperor dreams of nine red suns.
Mrs. Packletide's Tiger
帕克尔泰德夫人的老虎
Mrs. Packletide cannot bear that her rival Loona Bimberton is the talk of London, so she pays a thousand rupees for a safe tiger hunt in India. Perched in a tree with her thrifty paid companion, she waits for an elderly tiger and her moment of glory.
The King
王者
A junior official escorting six hundred thousand taels of tax silver wakes in an old temple to find every ounce gone, and his governor swears he is lying. A blind fortune-teller leads him five days into the mountains to a hidden city whose ruler is waiting for him.
Tobermory
会说话的猫
At a dull English country-house party, a forgettable guest announces that he has taught the household cat, Tobermory, to speak. The guests crowd round to test the marvel, never stopping to ask what a cat who wanders past every bedroom window might have heard.
Dream of Wolves
梦狼
Old Mr. Bai has heard nothing for three years from his eldest son, a magistrate in the south—until a guide from the world of the dead leads him, in a dream, to the son's yamen. Wolves sit and lie in every corner, white bones are heaped in the courtyard, and his son greets him warmly and orders dinner.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
獴哥里基-提基-塔维
A flood washes a young mongoose into the garden of an English family in India, and they take him in. But the garden already belongs to Nag and Nagaina, two cobras who have decided the family must go.
Nine Points of the Law
到手为强
A shady London solicitor advertises two thousand pounds for a risky, delicate mission, and Raffles answers under a false name. The job: get a priceless Velasquez back from a crude Queensland politician who bought it from a thieving son and sails for Australia tomorrow.
Sorcery
妖术
In the capital for the palace examination, the swordsman Yu is told by a market diviner that he will die within three days—unless he pays ten taels to have it averted. He walks out without paying, and on the third night, sword across his knees, he sits up in his inn to see what death will come for him.
The Tale of Xie Xiao'e
谢小娥传
River bandits murder Xie Xiao'e's father and husband and leave her for dead, and all the ghosts give her is a pair of baffling riddles. Years later a passing official cracks them in minutes, and the young widow sets out alone, disguised as a man, to find the killers.
Edith Swan-Neck
天鹅颈伊迪丝
After a failed theft, Arsène Lupin warns a Brazilian colonel that next time he will take all twelve of his priceless medieval tapestries. The colonel turns his Paris house into a fortress of alarms and ex-detectives, and Inspector Ganimard swears he will not be fooled again.
Mirror Divination
镜听
The younger Zheng son is a disappointment, so his parents coldly snub his wife while doting on his brother's. She throws her husband out of the bedroom to make him study, then on New Year's Eve consults a strange street omen she cannot understand.
The Queen’s Necklace
王后的项链
The Countess de Dreux-Soubise's historic diamond necklace vanishes overnight from a closet whose door was bolted and whose window was fastened, and the police can find neither thief nor method. Years later, an Italian chevalier at the count's dinner table offers to explain how it was done.
Lady Yan
颜氏
A brilliant orphaned girl marries a handsome young tutor, only to find his essays are hopeless and he fails the exams again and again. When he sneers that a woman could do no better, she cuts her hair-knot, puts on a man's cap, and goes to sit the examinations in his place.
Fourteenth Daughter Xin
辛十四娘
Reckless young Feng wins a fox spirit for his bride through a ghostly matchmaker, and she warns him to stay away from a vindictive old schoolmate. He doesn't listen — and one drunken laugh at a birthday banquet ends with a dead maid in his bed and a death sentence on his head.
The Black Pearl
黑珍珠
Arsène Lupin slips into a former opera star's Paris apartment at three in the morning to steal her famous black pearl, the gift of an emperor. In the dark beside her bed his hand touches something cold, and the pearl's case is empty.
The General of Great Strength
大力将军
Drinking at a country temple, the scholar Zha Yihuang watches a ragged beggar lift a bronze bell that several men could not budge, just to stash his scraps beneath it. Zha feeds him, clothes him and sends him off to the army with fifty taels — and forgets all about him.
Conscience in Art
艺术的良心
Jeff Peters insists on a swindler's conscience: he never takes a man's money without handing him something in return. When his partner Andy Tucker finds a rich Pittsburgh collector who prizes an ivory carving said to have a lost twin, the pair set out to sell him exactly what he longs for.
The Boatmen of Old Dragon Ford
老龙船户
Merchants travelling into Guangdong keep vanishing without a body or a word, and the officials have stopped even looking. A sleepless new governor prays to the City God and is answered with nothing but a four-line riddle.
Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
杰夫·彼得斯的人格磁力
Posing as the Indian medicine man Dr. Waugh-hoo, Jeff Peters is shut down in a little Arkansas town whose mayor is brother-in-law to the only doctor. Then the mayor falls desperately ill, and the only healer in reach is the quack he wants run out of town.
The Poem on the Fan
扇上诗
A woman is murdered on a rainy night, and the fan left in the mud points straight at a rich neighbour with a bad reputation. Ten officials uphold his death sentence—until a new one looks hard at the poem written on it.
Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess
柳毅传书
On his way home from failing the exams, Liu Yi meets a beautiful woman herding strange sheep in the wilds, cast out by her husband's family. She is the daughter of the Dragon Lord of Lake Dongting, and she begs him to carry a letter to her father beneath the water.
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
卡拉维拉斯县的著名跳蛙
Sent to ask after a certain Reverend Smiley, a visitor is cornered in a run-down mining-camp tavern by old Simon Wheeler, who instead tells him all about Jim Smiley, a man who would bet on anything. Smiley's pride and joy is a frog named Dan'l Webster, trained for three months and unbeatable on a dead level, until a stranger walks into camp.
Yu Jiang and the Wolves
于江杀狼
When a wolf kills his father in the fields, sixteen-year-old Yu Jiang slips out at night with an iron hammer and lies down where his father died. Wolves come, but his father's ghost says the killer has not shown itself yet.
Wushuang
无双
Wang Xianke is finally promised his cousin Wushuang on the very morning rebels storm the capital and tear the family apart. Years later he learns she is locked inside the palace, and her secret letter names only one man who might help.
Little Claus and Big Claus
小克劳斯和大克劳斯
Big Claus kills Little Claus’s only horse to teach him a lesson, leaving him nothing but the hide to sell. On the way to market Little Claus gets lost, climbs onto a farmhouse shed, and sees something through the window he was not meant to see.
A Case of Identity
身份案
Miss Mary Sutherland's shy fiancé, Hosmer Angel, got into a cab on the way to their wedding and was gone when it reached the church. All she has are four typewritten letters and her promise to stay true to him.
The Lady in the Carriage
车中女子
A scholar from Wu, in the capital for the examinations, is led by two strangers to a lavish feast where a young woman arrives by carriage and asks every guest to show off a secret skill. All he can manage is a few steps up a wall, and then he watches the young men around him run across the rafters like birds.
The Old Man at the Inn
京西店老人
Young Wei Xinggui trusts his bow and laughs off an innkeeper's warning about robbers on the night road. Out in the dark, something he cannot see follows him, and his arrows do nothing to stop it.
The Old Man of Lanling
兰陵老人
When an old man refuses to step aside for the Governor of the Capital, Li Gan has him beaten in front of thousands, but the blows land as if on a drum. That night Li changes into rags and goes to the old man's door to apologize.
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
三个加里德布
An American lawyer claims a Kansas millionaire left a fortune to be split among three men named Garrideb, and a reclusive old collector in London is one of them. Holmes notices that the lawyer's story does not hold together anywhere he touches it.
The Black Clay Pot
乌盆子
A rich merchant from Yangzhou falls drunk by the road outside Dingzhou and is never seen again. Months later an old man's new chamber pot starts to speak — but in court, before Lord Bao, it says nothing at all.
Who Cut the Ox's Tongue
割牛舌
A farmer finds his plough ox panting, its mouth full of blood and its tongue cut out, and has no idea who could hate him so. Lord Bao hands him five hundred strings of cash and gives him a very strange order.
General Pan's Prayer Beads
潘将军
General Pan's jade prayer beads, the charm behind his fortune, vanish from a sealed box with nothing else touched. An eighty-year-old retired constable takes up the case, and his only lead is a ragged girl who kicks a ball higher than the soldiers can.
The Schartz-Metterklume Method
施瓦茨-梅特克卢姆教学法
Lady Carlotta misses her train at a country station and is promptly claimed by the imposing Mrs. Quabarl as the new governess. Instead of correcting her, Lady Carlotta goes home with the family and announces that she teaches history by a method of her own.
The Stolen Horse
骗马
A servant riding his master's prized horse home lets a friendly stranger take it for a test ride — and watches him gallop off for good. With no name and no trail, only a scrawny mule left behind, Lord Bao tells him to come back in three days.
The Open Window
敞开的窗户
Framton Nuttel has come to the countryside to rest his nerves, and while he waits for his hostess her self-possessed niece tells him why the French window stays open on an October afternoon. Then the aunt comes down and starts talking about her husband's return.
The Disputed Umbrella
夺伞破伞
On a pouring day Luo Jinxian lets a stranger share his umbrella, and at the fork in the road the stranger walks off with it, swearing it is his own. No mark, no witness, worth five fen — and Lord Bao seems to lose his temper over the whole petty quarrel.
The Wedding-Ring
结婚戒指
Countess Yvonne d'Origny watches her little son bundled into a car by her husband's servant, then finds herself locked in and bound in her own boudoir. At noon her husband means to prove her unfaithful before his mother, and the only evidence he needs is the ring she can no longer take off.
Reading the Will
审遗嘱
Old Weng Jian finally has a son at eighty, yet on his deathbed hands his whole estate to his greedy son-in-law, will and all. Twenty years later, every court in the land still agrees: the will says the son gets nothing.
The Green Droppings
青粪
His stingy master's birthday goose is accepted by the host, so the servant, fearing a scolding, snatches a replacement from a farmer's flock — and when caught, readily agrees to the crowd's test to prove it is his. The flock rejects the goose, the crowd sides with the thief, and the real owner is left fuming.
The Episode of the Mexican Seer
墨西哥先知
On the Riviera, the shrewd South African millionaire Sir Charles Vandrift hires a celebrated Mexican seer for a private séance, determined to expose him as a fraud. The seer reads names, banknote numbers and family secrets, and Sir Charles insists he sees through every trick.
Gentlemen and Players
绅士与职业选手
Raffles, England's finest slow bowler and a secret gentleman-thief, drags his reluctant friend Bunny to a lord's country-house cricket week glittering with diamonds. But a pair of London professionals is already circling the house, and a Scotland Yard man is among the guests.
The Devil and Tom Walker
魔鬼与汤姆·沃克
Tom Walker, a miser who even cheats his own wife, takes a shortcut through a haunted swamp near Boston and meets a sooty woodsman who knows where Captain Kidd buried his gold. The treasure can be his, on certain conditions.
The Story-Teller
讲故事的人
On a sweltering train, an aunt cannot keep her three relentless "why?"-asking charges quiet, and her moral tale about a good little girl falls flat. The silent bachelor in the corner tells her she is no story-teller, and she dares him to do better.
Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!
二十万法郎悬赏
Lounging on a sofa, Arsène Lupin starts counting the flashes of sunlight dancing on the house across the street, and they spell out a misspelled warning in English. The trail leads to a secretary held prisoner by a mysterious doctor, and to the millionaire baron whose runaway wife has all Paris talking.
The Stockbroker's Clerk
证券经纪人的职员
Out-of-work clerk Hall Pycroft has just landed a post at a great City stockbroker's when a stranger offers him five hundred a year to run a hardware company instead. The new firm turns out to be two bare rooms in Birmingham, and his new boss has the same gold tooth as the stranger.
The Return Match
回敬一局
A notorious thief breaks out of Dartmoor, steals two parsons' clothes, and turns up in Raffles's rooms in the Albany demanding to be smuggled abroad, or he will talk. Then Raffles spots Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard in the foggy courtyard below.
The Wronged Talent
屈杀英才
Sun Che is the most gifted scholar in the Western Capital, yet he fails exam after exam while a classmate who can barely write takes high honors. He dies of the injustice — and files his complaint before King Yama himself.
The Kunlun Slave
昆仑奴
A shy young gentleman falls for a great lord's singing girl, who sends him a riddle with her fingers and a little mirror. Only his family's old Kunlun slave can read it, and he already has a plan for the guard dog, the ten walls, and everything after.
Nie Yinniang
聂隐娘
A general's daughter is spirited away by a begging nun and comes home five years later with a dagger hidden in the back of her head. Sent to assassinate a rival governor, she finds he already knows she is coming.
Red Thread
红线
A neighboring warlord is massing three thousand picked men to seize Governor Xue Song's land, and Xue cannot sleep. His lute-playing maid Hongxian quietly offers to settle the matter before dawn.
The Curly-Bearded Stranger
虬髯客传
As the Sui dynasty totters, a beauty holding a red whisk slips out of an arrogant minister's palace and knocks at a poor scholar's door. On the road to Taiyuan they meet a curly-bearded stranger with a leather bag, a dagger, and his eye on the whole empire.
The Tiger of Zhaocheng
赵城虎
When a tiger kills an old widow's only son, she wails in the county court and refuses to leave until the magistrate issues a warrant for the beast. The drunk constable who volunteered for the job soon learns that every day the tiger stays free costs him a beating.
The Arrest of Arsène Lupin
亚森·罗平被捕记
Midway across the Atlantic, a wireless message warns that the gentleman-burglar Arsène Lupin is aboard under a name beginning with R, and then the signal cuts out. Jewels vanish, suspicion falls, and the passengers count the days until the ship docks and the detective Ganimard is waiting.
The Swordswoman Next Door
侠女
Poor scholar Gu cannot work out the beautiful girl across the street: she nurses his sick mother like a daughter, yet will not hear of marriage and vanishes from her empty house at night. Then a flirtatious young man starts making trouble, and Gu sees what she keeps hidden under her jacket.
Governor Yu
于中丞
A rich bride's trousseau vanishes overnight from a walled city with no leads, and on a country road a 'dying sister' is carried home under a heavy quilt. The famously shrewd official Yu Chenglong notices small details that everyone else walks right past.
Yanzhi
胭脂
A cattle doctor's lovely daughter falls for a passing young scholar, and a neighbor's careless joke sets one impostor after another creeping toward her window. When her father is found dead with her embroidered slipper beneath the wall, an innocent man confesses under torture, and the case is far from over.
The Righteous Assassin
义侠
A sheriff secretly frees a prisoner who swears he is no common thief, and pays for it with a reprimand. Years later, down on his luck, he finds that same man serving as a county magistrate, and is welcomed like a brother, until he overhears a conversation through the privy wall.
The Story of an Hour
一小时的故事
A woman with a heart condition is gently told her husband has died in a train wreck. As she retreats to her room, a strange and powerful feeling begins to take hold of her, transforming her grief into something unexpected.
A Retrieved Reformation
改过自新
A safecracker named Jimmy Valentine leaves prison early, still swearing he never cracked a safe. Back at his old trade, he leaves a trail of immaculate robberies — and a patient detective named Ben Price takes up the chase. In the little town of Elmore, Arkansas, Jimmy becomes Ralph Spencer, a respectable shoe merchant engaged to the banker's daughter. Now Ben Price has found him, and the wedding is only days away.
The Last Leaf
最后一片叶子
In a cramped Greenwich Village studio, two young artists, Sue and Johnsy, face a crisis when Johnsy falls ill with pneumonia. As she lies bedridden, she becomes fixated on a dying ivy vine outside her window, believing her life is tied to the last remaining leaf. Will her fragile hope survive the stormy night?
The Gift of the Magi
麦琪的礼物
With only $1.87 and Christmas approaching, Della faces a dilemma: how to buy a worthy gift for her husband Jim. The story begins with her despair over their poverty and her decision to sacrifice her most prized possession.
A Scandal in Bohemia
波希米亚丑闻
Hired by the King of Bohemia to recover a compromising photograph, Sherlock Holmes devises an ingenious scheme, only to be outwitted by Irene Adler, the one woman who beat him at his own game.
The Lady and the Ghost
女士与幽灵
A lady is disturbed by an unexplained draft in her room, which soon coalesces into the form of a young man in evening dress. As he struggles to materialize, a conversation ensues that reveals a history of love and a recent, painful separation.
In the Avu Observatory
阿武天文台之夜
Woodhouse begins a solitary night watch in a remote Borneo observatory. Then a huge winged creature forces its way into the darkened dome, leaving him alone with something he cannot identify.
The Stolen Bacillus
被偷走的细菌
A visitor steals a tube of supposed cholera germs from a bacteriologist's laboratory. The scientist pursues him through London—but the visitor's ambitions and the tube's true contents may turn the chase into something stranger.
The River Friend
王六郎
A fisherman shares his wine with a mysterious stranger by the river. What begins as a quiet nightly friendship leads to an extraordinary choice between personal freedom and compassion for another.
The Taoist of Laoshan
崂山道士
Wang dreams of learning the secrets of the immortals. At a secluded mountain temple, he discovers moonlit wonders—but mastering magic may demand more patience than he is prepared to give.
The Pear Tree
种梨
A miserly pear seller refuses a wandering priest one piece of fruit. When a stranger steps in, the marketplace witnesses a small miracle—and a lesson no one will soon forget.