Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Subiaco lies beyond Tivoli, southeast from Rome, at the upper end of a wild gorge in the Samnite mountains. It is an archbishopric, and gives a title to a cardinal, which alone would make it a town of importance. It shares with Monte Cassino the honour of having been chosen by Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, his sister, as the site of a monastery and a convent; and in a cell in the... more...

CHAPTER I. "Where did you come from, Baby dear?Out of the everywhere into here?"But how did you come to us, you dear?God thought about you, and so I am here!" G. Macdonald. His real name was Fabian. But he was never called anything but Carrots. There were six of them. Jack, Cecil, Louise, Maurice, commonly called Mott, Floss, dear, dear Floss, whom he loved best of all, a long way the best... more...

Chapter I: The Birth of Columbine ALL day long over the gray Islington Street October, casting pearly mists, had turned the sun to silver and made London a city of meditation whose tumbled roofs and parapets and glancing spires appeared hushed and translucent as in a lake's tranquillity. The traffic, muted by the glory of a fine autumn day, marched, it seemed, more slowly and to a sound of heavier... more...

No. 1 THE GATEWAY OF THE MONSTER In response to Carnacki's usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a story, I arrived promptly at 427, Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were always invited to these happy little times, there before me. Five minutes later, Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor, and I were all engaged in the "pleasant occupation" of dining. "You've... more...

CHAPTER I. IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD "Carnac! Carnac! Come and catch me, Carnac!" It was a day of perfect summer and hope and happiness in the sweet, wild world behind the near woods and the far circle of sky and pine and hemlock. The voice that called was young and vibrant, and had in it the simple, true soul of things. It had the clearness of a bugle-call, ample and full of life and all... more...

CHAPTER 1 The tropical sun mounted the rim of the golden Caribbean, quivered for a moment like a fledgeling preening its wings for flight, then launched forth boldly into the vault of heaven, shattering the lowering vapors of night into a myriad fleecy clouds of every form and color, and driving them before it into the abysmal blue above. Leaping the sullen walls of old Cartagena, the morning beams... more...

CHAPTER I I had always suspected the geographical authorities did not know what they were talking about when they located the battlefield of Munda in the county of the Bastuli-Poeni, close to the modern Monda, some two leagues north of Marbella. According to my own surmise, founded on the text of the anonymous author of the Bellum Hispaniense, and on certain information culled from the excellent... more...

By the middle of the seventeenth century, almost a hundred thousand English men and women had settled in the New World. We sometimes forget that the largest colony across the Atlantic in those early years was not in Virginia, not in New England, but on the small eastern islands of the Caribbean, called the Caribbees. Early existence in the Caribbeanwas brutal, and at first these immigrants struggled... more...

CHAPTER I HOW PAUL MARTEL FELL OUT WITH SERCQ To give you a clear understanding of matters I must begin at the beginning and set things down in their proper order, though, as you will see, that was not by any means the way in which I myself came to learn them. For my mother and my grandfather were not given to overmuch talk at the best of times, and all my boyish questionings concerning my father left... more...

he game was stud. There were seven at the table, which makes for good poker. Outside of Nick, who banked the game, nobody looked familiar. They all had the beat look of compulsive gamblers, fogged over by their individual attempts at a poker face. They were a cagey-looking lot. Only one of them was within ten years of my age. "Just in case, gamblers," the young one said. I looked up from... more...