Fiction Books

The man with the pith helmet had his back toward me. Hunched forward, he was screaming at the girl in the lens of his camera. "Don't just stand there, Dotty! Move! Do something! Back up toward that column with inscriptions on it...." The girl was tall and longlegged with ideal body proportions, her features and skin coloring a perfect norm-blend with no throwback elements. Right now she... more...

CHAPTER I. In the marble-floored vestibule of the Metropolitan Grand Hotel in Buffalo, Professor Stillson Renmark stood and looked about him with the anxious manner of a person unused to the gaudy splendor of the modern American house of entertainment. The professor had paused halfway between the door and the marble counter, because he began to fear that he had arrived at an inopportune time, that... more...

PREFACE. * * * * * It is nearly fifteen years since I was, for the first time, enabled to become a frequent and attentive visitor in Mr. Coleridge's domestic society. His exhibition of intellectual power in living discourse struck me at once as unique and transcendant; and upon my return home, on the very first evening which I spent with him after my boyhood, I committed to writing, as well as I... more...

CHAPTER I. When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been, gives a poignancy to sorrow—a more utter blankness to the desolation.  James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836.  A few minutes before his death, he opened his already... more...

CHAPTER I EVENING IN GLENAVELIN From the heart of a great hill land Glenavelin stretches west and south to the wider Gled valley, where its stream joins with the greater water in its seaward course. Its head is far inland in a place of mountain solitudes, but its mouth is all but on the lip of the sea, and salt breezes fight with the flying winds of the hills. It is a land of green meadows on the brink... more...

THE BOY THE ELF Sunday, March twentieth. Once there was a boy. He was—let us say—something like fourteen years old; long and loose-jointed and towheaded. He wasn't good for much, that boy. His chief delight was to eat and sleep; and after that—he liked best to make mischief. It was a Sunday morning and the boy's parents were getting ready to go to church. The boy sat on the edge of the... more...

I When Hugh Seymour was nine years of age he was sent from Ceylon, where his parents lived, to be educated in England. His relations having, for the most part, settled in foreign countries, he spent his holidays as a very minute and pale-faced "paying guest" in various houses where other children were of more importance than he, or where children as a race were of no importance at all. It was... more...

olonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil aircushion convertible along the edge of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil's Cathedral, crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and debouched into the heavy, and largely automated traffic of Pyarnikskaya. At Dobryninskaya Square he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until he reached the old baroque palace which... more...

CHAPTER I THE HERMIT THRUSH SINGS Then twilight falls with the touchOf a hand that soothes and stills,And a swamp-robin sings into lightThe lone white star of the hills. Alone in the dusk he sings,And the joy of another dayIs folded in peace and borneOn the drift of years away.—BLISS CARMAN. Other years, by the time the mid-June days were come, the little brook that sang through John McIntyre's... more...

THE BRACELETS. In a beautiful and retired part of England lived Mrs. Villars, a lady whose accurate understanding, benevolent heart, and steady temper, peculiarly fitted her for the most difficult, as well as most important of all occupations—the education of youth. This task she had undertaken; and twenty young persons were put under her care, with the perfect confidence of their parents. No young... more...