O Demônio e a Srta. Prym

A stranger arrives in Viscos, a small, isolated mountain village, and hides eleven bars of gold nearby. He puts a proposition to the villagers, relayed through Chantal, a young barmaid: if someone in the village is murdered within a week, the survivors will share ten of the bars; the eleventh is hers alone, whether or not she takes part.

Tormented by his own past, the stranger wants to test whether ordinary people are fundamentally good or capable of anything given enough temptation. As suspicion and greed spread through Viscos, Chantal is left to decide what she is willing to do, and to say, to stop it.

Part of Paulo Coelho's "On the Seventh Day" trilogy, this is a spare fable about temptation, complicity, and the choices that reveal character.