Fiction Books

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE HINDS. A spring of living water, known in the neighborhood by the appropriate name of the "Fountain of the Hinds," empties its trickling stream under the oaks of one of the most secret recesses of the forest of Compiegne. Stags and hinds, deers and does, bucks and she-goats come to water at the spot, leaving behind them numerous imprints of their steps on the borders of the... more...

A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home ... literally! The leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged... more...

I. Edward Tyson, the author of the Essay with which this book is concerned, was, on the authority of Monk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, born, according to some accounts, at Bristol, according to others, at Clevedon, co. Somerset, but was descended from a family which had long settled in Cumberland. He was educated at Magdalene Hall, Oxford, as a member of which he proceeded Bachelor... more...

CHAPTER I A BOLT FOR FREEDOM Most of the really important things in life—such as love and death—happen unexpectedly. I know that my escape from Dartmoor did. We had just left the quarries—eighteen of us, all dressed in that depressing costume which King George provides for his less elusive subjects—and we were shambling sullenly back along the gloomy road which leads through the plantation to... more...

The Horror of the Heights The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid fancies with the... more...

CHAPTER I WANTED AT REHEARSAL Jerramy, thirty years' stage-door keeper at the Theatre Royal, Norcaster, had come to regard each successive Monday morning as a time for the renewal of old acquaintance. For at any rate forty-six weeks of the fifty-two, theatrical companies came and went at Norcaster with unfailing regularity. The company which presented itself for patronage in the first week of... more...

CHAPTER I. Winged! It was the second day in February, 1915. I'll not forget it in a hurry. That day I fell into the hands of the German Army. "Fell," in my case, was the correct word, for my monoplane was greeted with a volley of shots from some tree-hidden German troops as I was passing over the north-eastern edge of the Argonne Forest. I was returning from Saarbruck when I got winged.... more...

INTRODUCTION These stories originally appeared in two volumes, the first in 1884, the second in 1886. The latter part of the present edition is thus separated from the first part by a lapse of two years. Strindberg's views were continually undergoing changes. Constancy was never a trait of his. He himself tells us that opinions are but the reflection of a man's experiences, changing as his... more...

CHAPTER I The Brunford Town Hall clock was just chiming half-past three as Tom Pollard left his home in Dixon Street and made his way towards the Thorn and Thistle public-house. It was not Tom's intention to stay long at the Thorn and Thistle, as he had other plans in view, nevertheless something drew him there. He crossed the tram lines in St. George's Street, and, having stopped to exchange... more...

On the first cloudy day in November, Tom Blacker, the shining light of Ostreich and Company, Public Relations Counsellors, placed a call to a shirtsleeved man on the rooftop of the Cannon Building in New York City. His message brought an immediate response from the waiting engineer, who flicked switches and twirled dials with expert motions, and brought into play the gigantic 50,000-watt projector... more...