French literature has a long history of the short tale. This feast of an anthology honours both the genre's most well-known practitioners and recently translated authors waiting to be rediscovered. Decadent tales, "bloody tales," fairy tales, detective stories, and war stories can be found here. They are tales about oneself and another, partners and lovers, the country and the city, the rich and the destitute. From the fifteenth century until the "golden period" of the fin de si?cle, the first book covers four hundred years. Its pages are filled with a variety of characters in a cacophony of voices and styles, including lovers, ghosts, cardinals, labourers, magical monuments, gentlemen burglars, retired bureaucrats, panthers, and parrots. From Victor Hugo's polemic realism to Madame de Lafayette's affairs, the supernatural mystery of Guy de Maupassant to the dark sensuality of Rachilde, this is the place to start for lovers of French literature, new and old.