Fiction Books

COMPOSITION. 'Genius is the power of making efforts.' Erroneous opinions, once formed, seldom fail to affect the taste of a man's character through his whole life. It is, therefore, of the utmost necessity that his conduct be rightly directed. 'Art will not descend to us, we must be made to reach and aspire to it.' 'The great art to learn much,' says Locke, 'is... more...

INTRODUCTION. The history of the Utah Batteries should be a plain tale, for deeds of valor cannot be garnished by the flower of rhetoric or the pomp of oratory. This is a simple story of brave deeds. The stern browed Heracles standing unarmed in the midst of his countrymen was a frank, common figure, but when he dashed like Ares upon the Lerneaen hydra he became majestic, and no mere pen picture could... more...

THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I   It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the sympathy of the reader but may even... more...

Laurence Vanderlyn, unpaid attaché at the American Embassy in Paris, strode down the long grey platform marked No. 5, of the Gare de Lyon. It was seven o'clock, the hour at which Paris is dining or is about to dine, and the huge station was almost deserted. The train de luxe had gone more than an hour ago, the Riviera rapide would not start till ten, but one of those trains bound for the South,... more...

There are some men born with a vagrant strain in the blood, an unsatiable inquisitiveness about the world beyond their doors.  Natural revolutionaries they, with an ingrained distaste for the routine of ordinary life and the conventions of civilization.  The average common-sense Englishman distrusts the Vagabond for his want of sympathy with established law and order.  Eccentricity and... more...

PROLOGUE At the piano a man sat playing the "Revolutionary Étude" of Chopin. The room was magnificent in its proportions, its furnishings were massive, its paneled oak walls were hung with portraits of men and women in the costumes of a bygone day. Through the lofty windows, the casements of which were open to the evening sky there was a vista of forest and meadow-land stretching interminably... more...

MEMOIR OF GRACE AGUILAR. Grace Aguilar was born at Hackney, June 2nd, 1816. She was the eldest child, and only daughter of Emanuel Aguilar, one of those merchants descended from the Jews of Spain, who, almost within the memory of man, fled from persecution in that country, and sought and found an asylum in England. The delicate frame and feeble health observable in Grace Aguilar throughout her life,... more...

The Valiant Runaways I Roldan Castanada walked excitedly up and down the verandah of his father's house, his thumbs thrust into the red silk sash that was knotted about his waist, his cambric shirt open at the throat as if pulled impatiently apart; the soft grey sombrero on the back of his curly head making a wide frame for his dark, flushed, scowling face. There was nothing in the surroundings to... more...

CHAPTER I THE CRASH “ Failed!” ejaculated John Valiant blankly, and the hat he held dropped to the claret-colored rug like a huge white splotch of sudden fright. “The Corporation—failed!” The young man was the glass of fashion, from the silken ribbon on the spotless Panama to his pearl-gray gaiters, and well favored—a lithe stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel eyes and strong brown hair... more...

he Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish. Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround... more...