Fiction Books

I The view from the terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye is immense and famous. Paris lies spread before you in dusky vastness, domed and fortified, glittering here and there through her light vapours and girdled with her silver Seine. Behind you is a park of stately symmetry, and behind that a forest where you may lounge through turfy avenues and light-chequered glades and quite forget that you are within... more...

The following History is given in a series of letters, written Principally in a double yet separate correspondence; Between two young ladies of virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable friendship for each other, and writing not merely for amusement, but upon the most interesting subjects; in which every private family, more or less, may find itself concerned; and, Between two gentlemen of free lives;... more...

First Meeting between a citizen in Spectacles and the Great Pleasure-Dog Behemoth; also of Charles Gardiner West, a Personage at Thirty. It was five of a November afternoon, crisp and sharp, and already running into dusk. Down the street came a girl and a dog, rather a small girl and quite a behemothian dog. If she had been a shade smaller, or he a shade more behemothian, the thing would have... more...

RELUCTANCE. Neither life nor the lawn-tennis club was so full at Natterley that the news of Harry Sterling's return had not some importance. He came back, moreover, to assume a position very different from his old one. He had left Harrow now, departing in the sweet aroma of a long score against Eton at Lord's, and was to go up to Oxford in October. Now between a schoolboy and a University man... more...

Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed—for humans at any rate. Steena of the spaceways—that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I’ve tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar... more...

PREFACE When visiting my native county some time since, I was struck with the modern, "up-to-date," aspect of men and things. In this respect Cornwall has much changed even during the twenty years since I left it. The quiet, old-world feeling which I can remember has gone, and instead there is a spirit of eagerness, almost amounting to rush. I discovered, too, that the old stories, dear to me,... more...

Martha Dane paused, looking up at the purple-tinged copper sky. The wind had shifted since noon, while she had been inside, and the dust storm that was sweeping the high deserts to the east was now blowing out over Syrtis. The sun, magnified by the haze, was a gorgeous magenta ball, as large as the sun of Terra, at which she could look directly. Tonight, some of that dust would come sifting down from... more...

CHAPTER ONE THE COURAGE OF SELF-CONQUESTTHE highest courage is impossible without self-conquest. And self-conquest is never easy. A man may be a marvel of physical courage, and be a coward in matters of self-government. Failure here threatens dire disaster to his entire career.Alexander the Great conquered most of the world he knew, but he permitted his lower nature to conquer his better self, and he... more...

HASTINGS Hastings is the gateway into an enchanted garden. Between the hills and the sea it lies—the most romantic province in this England of ours. Scarcely a place in it seems to belong to this present: from end to end it is built up almost entirely of memories. The very repetition of the names—Rye, Winchelsea, Pevensey, Battle, Bodiam, Hurstmonceux—conjures up the past in all its magnificence... more...

Christina didn't want to be an escort! She didn't want to juggle the egos of different men! She wanted to get a real job in the corporate world and stop escorting, but what should she do when she finally gets her corporate job and her favorite client becomes her boss? To make it worse, he's very attractive.