Fiction Books

HEN it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75 caliber recoilless at my sternum. "You... more...

His "planet" was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest, Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge, bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardly in the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoric iron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodily away through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into... more...

CHAPTER I THE CURTAIN RISES ON A HOME None of it might ever have happened, if Richard Kendrick had gone into the house of Mr. Robert Gray, on that first night, by the front door. For, if he had made his first entrance by that front door, if he had been admitted by the maidservant in proper fashion and conducted into Judge Calvin Gray's presence in the library, if he had delivered his message, from... more...

SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE WOOD. nce there was a royal couple who grieved excessively because they had no children. When at last, after long waiting, the queen presented her husband with a little daughter, his majesty showed his joy by giving a christening feast, so grand that the like of it was never known. He invited all the fairies in the land—there were seven altogether—to stand godmothers to the... more...

Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that was available in the Times morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And all through the journey she'd studied her Brief Introduction to Terrestrial Manners and Mores avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in spots, but it had facts in it, too. So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take wing on... more...

GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER-HILL BATTLE AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY 'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, one remembersAll the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's souls";When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story,To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. I had heard the muskets' rattle of the April... more...

Narrative Forms —This little volume is meant to be a discussion of but one of the various forms that literature takes, and it will be first in order to see what are the elements that go to the making of a narrative having literary quality. A story may be true or false, but we shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first... more...

CHAPTER I "THE PROUD PARENT" If you happen to be riding a bicycle you arrive somewhat unexpectedly in the little Ardenshire village of Hampton Bagot, and are through it in a flash, before you quite realise its existence. But in the unlikely event of your having business or pleasure there, you approach the place more leisurely in the carrier's cart from the little station which absurdly... more...

CHAPTER I. THE REMNANTS OF THE AMEDROZ FAMILY.  Mrs. Amedroz, the wife of Bernard Amedroz, Esq., of Belton Castle, and mother of Charles and Clara Amedroz, died when those children were only eight and six years old, thereby subjecting them to the greatest misfortune which children born in that sphere of life can be made to suffer. And, in the case of this boy and girl the misfortune was aggravated... more...

CHAPTER IWhat defense could she raise against mutant science—telepathy, invisibility, teleportation—especially since Earth was not aware of its danger!When Julia (she pronounced the name without the "a" at the end) was twenty-four, she inherited $22,000 from an obscure uncle in California. After deducting taxes and administrative expenses, the California State Court ordered the money... more...