Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party is a shimmering example of modernist short fiction, a narrative that glides gracefully on the surface of a single day while plunging into the unsettling depths of class, mortality, and self-awareness.

Set aboard the steamboat Fall of Rome during a lively excursion, the story captures the absurdities of social posturing, class dynamics, and familial tensions through the misadventures of Mrs. Tuttle, her ostentatious pet parrot, and a cast of vividly drawn townsfolk.

Guy de Maupassant’s Mademoiselle Fifi is a taut and scathing short story that captures the brutal absurdities of war and the quiet defiance of the oppressed.

She remained entirely alone in that isolated dwelling, so far from the village, on the edge of the wood. She was not afraid, however, being of the same strain as the men folk—a hardy old woman, tall and thin, who seldom laughed and with whom one never jested. The women of the fields laugh but little in any case, that is men's business.

Masha wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a warm cloak, and with a box in her hand passed out on to the back staircase. They descended into the garden. The snowstorm raged: a strong wind blew against them as if trying to stop the young culprit. With difficulty they reached the end of the garden. In the road a sledge awaited them.