Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. ROTHBERT, COUNT OF PARIS. The house of Master Eidiol, the dean of the Skippers' or Mariners' Guild of Paris, was situated not far from the port of St. Landry and of the ramparts of that part of the town that is known as the Cite, which is bathed by the two branches of the Seine, and is flanked with towers at the entrance of the large and the small bridge, its only means of access... more...

CHAPTER I.  CRIMSON FAVOURS. M. de Tavannes smiled.  Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered; as if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door at her elbow, chilled her.  And then came a welcome interruption. “Tavannes!” “Sire!” Count Hannibal rose slowly.  The King had called, and he had no choice but to obey and go.  Yet he hung a last moment over his companion,... more...

is sleep-drugged mind was slow to respond. He was lying face down, he knew that. And he ought to get up. If he didn't get up he would drown. Something hot and heavy, like a huge hand, was pressing him deeper into the brackish mire. He pondered. Perhaps it were better to drown. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of the thought, then decided against it. Plenty of time later for drowning.... more...

ACT THE FIRST. SCENE I. The Grove.—Lady Waitfor't's House. Enter Marianne, and Letty, from the House. Mari. But I tell you I will come out—I didn't come to Bath to be confined, nor I won't—I hate all their company, but sweet Miss Courtney's. Letty. I declare, Miss Marianne, you grow worse and worse every day, your country manners will be the ruin of you. Mari. Don't... more...

CHAPTER I. I, who write this, am a dead man. Dead legally—dead by absolute proofs—dead and buried! Ask for me in my native city and they will tell you I was one of the victims of the cholera that ravaged Naples in 1884, and that my mortal remains lie moldering in the funeral vault of my ancestors. Yet—I live! I feel the warm blood coursing through my veins—the blood of thirty summers—the... more...

King Cole was King before the troubles came,The land was happy while he held the helm,The valley-land from Condicote to Thame,Watered by Thames and green with many an elm.For many a year he governed well his realm,So well-beloved, that, when at last he died,It was bereavement to the countryside. So good, so well-beloved, had he beenIn life, that when he reached the judging-place(There where the scales... more...

A Kiss and an Escape I Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its mark,—the ringleader of the Vigilantes,—and had left Red Pete, who had fired it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy. For his hand had been cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden onset, and so the inevitable end had come. He submitted sullenly to his captors; his companion fugitive and... more...

A note about this story This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator. I recently did the... more...

There wasn’t anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn’t anything overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the co-pilot’s shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bank joined—it was many miles away—and tried to picture the job before him. Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. They contained the pilot gyros for the most... more...

~I~ He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a... more...