Fiction Books

errence O'Mara lay flat on his back trying to keep his big body as still as possible. Despite the fact that he was stripped to his regulation shorts, a large pool of sweat had formed on the cot underneath him. The only movement he permitted himself was an occasional pursing of his lips as he dragged on a cigarette and sent a swirl of smoke upward through the heavy humid air. Then he would just lie... more...

The Young Man Who Was a Favourite Son Which would you say is the harder to bear, adversity or prosperity? I am not sure. If I were a betting man I would not know on which horse to put my money. The Bible says, "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The narrowness and the meagreness of their lives, the lack of access to the highest interests seems to drive them oftentimes into the... more...

THE HISTORY OF TOM THUMB In the days of King Arthur, Merlin, the famous enchanter, was out on a journey, and stopped one day at the cottage of an honest ploughman to ask for refreshment. The ploughman's wife brought him some milk in a wooden bowl, and some brown bread on a wooden platter. Merlin could not help observing that, although everything within the cottage was particularly neat and in good... more...

CHAPTER I The New Murders I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic when the first of the new murders was committed. The President fell almost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at my elbow was the murderer. I don't know why, call it intuition if you will. The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in the press of the throng,... more...

A NEW ATLANTIS. The New Year's debts are paid, the May-day moving is over and settled, and still a remnant of money is found sticking to the bottom of the old marmalade pot. Where shall we go? There is nothing like the sea. Shall it be Newport? But Newport is no longer the ocean pure and deep, in the rich severity of its sangre azul. We want to admire the waves, and they drag us off to inspect the... more...

INTRODUCTION The present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. Waverley embraced the age of our fathers, Guy Mannering that of our own youth, and the Antiquary refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have, in the two last narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society... more...

PUSHING OFF "Oh, Cora! Isn't this perfectly splendid!" exclaimed Bess Robinson. "Delightful!" chimed in her twin sister, Belle. "I'm glad you like it," said Cora Kimball, the camp hostess. "I felt that you would, but one can never be sure—especially of Belle. Jack said she would fall a prey to that clump of white birches over there, and would want to paint... more...

CHAPTER I. THE CONSPIRATORS—THE FORGED LETTER—THE PLAN. In the rear room of a small frame building, the front of which was occupied as a coal office, located on West Lake street, Chicago, three men were seated around a square pine table. The curtains of the window were not only drawn inside, but the heavy shutters were closed on the outside. A blanket was nailed over the only door of the room, and... more...

A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF FAIRFAX When man reaches out into space to explore a new planet, his adventure will be comparable in many ways to that of the colonists who braved the space of water in the early seventeenth century to establish their proprietary rights on a strange continent called "America". These colonists found themselves confronted with the need to feed, house and clothe themselves... more...

KETTLE MOUNTAIN If John Westley had not deliberately run away from his guide that August morning and lost himself on Kettle Mountain, he would never have found the Wishing-rock, nor the Witches' Glade, nor Miss Jerauld Travis. Even a man whose hair has begun to grow a little gray over his ears can have moments of wildest rebellion against authority. John Westley had had such; he had wakened very... more...