Fiction Books

O bony relic of forgotten days,Which, from my bookshelf, dominates the room,Your empty sockets, with sardonic gaze,Follow me weirdly in the deepening gloom!I often think, if sudden speech returned,You might reveal that secret, grisly jestYou're grinning at—or tell me what you've learnedOf that dark realm to which we're all addressed.By what rude hands were you exhumed, and whyWrenched... more...

CHAPTER I. "It is not a question of what we should like to do, Randy; it is a question of what we must do." "I know it, Earl. One thing is certain: the way matters stand we can't pay the quarter's rent for this timber land to-morrow unless we borrow the money, and where we are going for it I haven't the least idea." "Nor I. It's a pity the Jackson Lumber Company... more...

"Nice that you dropped in," the man in the detention room said. "I never expected a visit from the Consul General. It makes me feel important." "The Confederation takes an interest in all of its citizens' welfare," Lanceford said. "You are important! Incidentally, how is it going?" "Not too bad. They treat me all right. But these natives sure are tough on... more...

"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. "Only one way to go, where we can float down through the clouds to Paradise. That's straight ahead to the sun with the red rim around it." But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space... more...

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I THROW AMBS-ACE THE work of the day being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The birds that sing all day have hushed, and the horned owls, the... more...

ENCOUNTER Soames Forsyte emerged from the Knightsbridge Hotel, where he was staying, in the afternoon of the 12th of May, 1920, with the intention of visiting a collection of pictures in a Gallery off Cork Street, and looking into the Future. He walked. Since the War he never took a cab if he could help it. Their drivers were, in his view, an uncivil lot, though, now that the War was over and supply... more...

CHAPTER I 'Ain't this ripping?' said I to my wife. 'Yes, delightful,' she said. It really was rather nice. It had been quite hot in the plains, and was pleasantly cool up here. My wife and family had preceded me and had been settled for some weeks in the house which we had taken in the hills for the hot weather, and now I had just arrived on two months' leave. We were... more...

CHAPTER I"Oh, but the door that waits a friend  Swings open to the day.  There stood no warder at my gate  To bid love stand or stay." "You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"—Gilbert Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as he glanced at his companion, were uneasy and not quite honest. "We are the right sort of... more...

PREFACE In the course of my experience as an occasional lecturer during the past twelve years, I have been much impressed by the keen interest evinced, even by the most unlettered persons, when astronomical subjects are dealt with in plain untechnical language which they can really grasp and understand. The pertinent questions which have been addressed to me privately by members of my audiences have... more...

  nearly stumbled over the kid in the dark before I saw him. His wheelchair was parked as usual on the tired strip of carpet grass that separated his mother's trailer from the one Doc Shull and I lived in, but it wasn't exactly where I'd learned to expect it when I rolled in at night from the fishing boats. Usually it was nearer the west end of the strip where Joey could look across the... more...