Fiction Books

THE MOON STRICKEN It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed—as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth—to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping... more...

Today more than other days Raoul Beardsley felt the burden, the dragging sense of inevitability. He frowned; he glanced at his watch; he leaned forward to speak to the copter pilot and then changed his mind. He settled back, and from idle habit adjusted his chair-scope to the familiar broad-spoked area of Washington just below. "I'll not have it happening again today!" he told himself... 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...

PROLOGUE And as the sturdy Pilgrim Fathers cut their perilous way through the dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and treeless West were forced to fight the fury of the winds. The graves of them lie mounded here and there in the uncultivated corners of the fields, though more often one wanders across the... more...

GENERAL INTRODUCTION. There are few amusements more dangerous for an author than the indulgence in ironic descriptions of his own work. If the irony is depreciatory, posterity is but too likely to say, "Many a true word is spoken in jest;" if it is encomiastic, the same ruthless and ungrateful critic is but too likely to take it as an involuntary confession of folly and vanity. But when... more...

The region discussed in this bulletin is situated in western Connecticut and is approximately 8 miles wide and 18 miles long in a north-south direction, as shown on .Throughout, the rocks are crystalline and include gneiss, schist, and marble--the metamorphosed equivalents of a large variety of ancient sedimentary and igneous rocks.For the purposes of this report, the geologic history may be said to... more...

CHAPTER I A WASP IN THE SCHOOLROOM One bright May morning, Madge, Betty, and John were a little more inattentive than usual over their lessons. Miss Thompson was very patient. She knew that warm spring days were full of distracting interests. The first wasp of the season managed to get into the schoolroom and buzz ostentatiously on the window-pane in the middle of a history lesson. There was a long... more...

CHAPTER VIII. FLIGHT AND DEATH OF POMPEY. Pursuit of the vanquished.Pompey recovers himself. Caesar pursued the discomfited and flying bodies of Pompey's army to the camp. They made a brief stand upon the ramparts and at the gates in a vain and fruitless struggle against the tide of victory which they soon perceived must fully overwhelm them. They gave way continually here and there along the... more...

CHAPTER I. Colonial policy—Union or separation—Self-government—Varieties of condition—The Pacific colonies—The West Indies—Proposals for a West Indian federation—Nature of the population—American union and British plantations—Original conquest of the West Indies. The Colonial Exhibition has come and gone. Delegates from our great self-governed dependencies have met and consulted... more...

I "Yes, I'm shif'less. I'm gen'ally considered shif'less," said William Benslow. He spoke in a tone of satisfaction, and hitched his trousers skilfully into place by their one suspender. His companion shifted his easel a little, squinting across the harbor at the changing light. There was a mysterious green in the water that he failed to find in his color-box. William... more...