Fiction Books

Sometimes, I know, I must seem a crotchety old man. "Old John Hanson," they call me, and roll their eyes as though to say, "Of course, you have to forgive him on account of his age." But the joke isn't always on me. Not infrequently I gain much amusement observing these cocky youngsters who strut in the blue-and-silver uniforms of the Service in which, until more or less recently,... more...

THE WIFE I I RECEIVED the following letter: "DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH! "Not far from you—that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo—very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there, and... more...

It was Madame who first entered the box, and Madame was bright with youthful bloom, bright with jewels, and, moreover, a beauty. She was a little creature, with childishly large eyes, a low, white forehead, reddish-brown hair, and Greek nose and mouth. "Clearly," remarked the old lady in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air of... more...

"I want you to put me in prison!" the big, hairy man said in a trembling voice. He was addressing his request to a thin woman sitting behind a desk that seemed much too big for her. The plaque on the desk said: LT. PHOEBE HARRISTERRAN REHABILITATION SERVICE Lieutenant Harris glanced at the man before her for only a moment before she returned her eyes to the dossier on the desk; but long enough... more...

id the Pilot slowed the ship almost to a standstill, and peered anxiously at the green planet below. Even without instruments, there was no mistaking it. Third from its sun, it was the only planet in this system capable of sustaining life. Peacefully it swam beneath its gauze of clouds. It looked very innocent. And yet, twenty previous Grom expeditions had set out to prepare this planet for... more...

CHAPTER I. AN "UNLIMITED" MONARCHY And at last they find out, to their greatest surprise,That't is easier far to be "merry than wise." Bell: Images. "Here is Mr. Cashel; here he is!" exclaimed a number of voices, as Roland, with a heart full of indignant anger, ascended the terrace upon which the great drawing-room opened, and at every window of which stood groups of his... more...

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS   Truth fails not, but her outward forms that bear  The longest date do melt like frosty rime. I The fourth Christian century was far past its meridian, when, high above the summit of the supreme peak of Caucasus, a magnificent eagle came sailing on broad fans into the blue, and his shadow skimmed the glittering snow as it had done day by day for thousands of years. A human... more...

he wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow. The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and... more...

CHAPTER I What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention—spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance.  He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the... more...

A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS “Hai-yai, so bright a day, so clear!” said Mitiahwe as she entered the big lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of a grizzly which had fallen to her man’s rifle. “Hai-yai, I wish it would last forever—so sweet!” she added, smoothing the fur lingeringly and showing her teeth in a smile. “There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe.... more...