Fiction Books

INTRODUCTION.PRELIMINARY REMARKS UPON THE DISCOVERY OF THE TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA.INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE EXECUTION OF THE VOYAGE.PASSAGE TO NEW SOUTH WALES.PURCHASE AND EQUIPMENT OF THE MERMAID.Nearly three centuries* have now elapsed since our first knowledge of the Great South Land, the Terra Australis Incognita of ancient geographers; and, until within the last century, comparatively little had... more...

I belong to the family of the Merrys of Leicestershire. Our chief characteristic was well suited to our patronymic. “Merry by name and merry by nature,” was a common saying among us. Indeed, a more good-natured, laughing, happy set of people it would be difficult to find. Right jovial was the rattle of tongues and the cachinnation which went forward whenever we were assembled together either at... more...

CHAPTER I A BIG GIFT FOR A SMALL MAID. “Well, of all things!” exclaimed Mrs. Betty Calvert, shaking her white head and tossing her hands in a gesture of amazement. Then, as the letter she had held fell to the floor, her dark eyes twinkled with amusement and she smilingly demanded: “Dorothy, do you want an elephant?” The girl had been reading her own letters, just come in the morning’s mail,... more...

PREFACE The history of the world consists mainly of the stories of the lives of certain men and women whose deeds have been of sufficient importance to make them worth relating. The lives of some persons have been worth narrating because of their abounding in deeds of great merit, such as the lives of Washington, Gladstone, Frances E. Willard, and Joan of Arc. The lives of others have been thought... more...

CHAPTER I From Denver to Spokane, from El Paso to Fort Benton, men talk of Casey Ryan and smile when they speak his name. Old men with the flat tone of coming senility in their voices will suck at their pipes and cackle reminiscently while they tell you of Casey's tumultuous youth—when he drove the six fastest horses in Colorado on the stage out from Cripple Creek, and whooped past would-be... more...

PREFACE. It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding. How much more difficult is it to construct stories suited to the early years of youth, and, at the same time, conformable to the complicate relations of modern society—fictions, that shall display examples of virtue, without initiating the young reader into the ways of... more...

hat," she demanded, sitting bolt upright in the hospital bed, "has happened to the medical world? In Italy, they tell me I have an abdominal tumor. In Paris, it's cancer. And now you fat-heads are trying to tell me I'm pregnant!" I stuffed my stethoscope into my jacket pocket and tried to pat her hand. "Take it easy, Mrs. Caffey—" "It's Miss Caffey, damn... more...

CHAPTER I THE LIVING DEAD   "Oh, I want to go back to the Rio Grande!        The Rio!  That's where I long to be!" The words, sung in a soft and musical tenor, died away and changed to a plaintive whistle, leaving the scene more lonely than ever. For a few moments nothing was to be seen except the endless expanse of wilderness, and nothing was to be heard save the mournful... more...

But yesterday, a whole planet had shouted: Hail Hradzka! Hail the Leader! Today, they were screaming: Death to Hradzka! Kill the tyrant! The Palace, where Hradzka, surrounded by his sycophants and guards, had lorded it over a solar system, was now an inferno. Those who had been too closely identified with the dictator's rule to hope for forgiveness were fighting to the last, seeking only a quick... more...

PROLOGUE. “That girl the murderer of a man—of Lee Holly! That pretty little girl? Bosh! I don’t believe it.” “I did not say she killed him; I said she was suspected. And even though she was cleared, the death of that renegade adds one more to the mysteries of our new West. But I think the mere suspicion that she did it entitles her to a medal, or an ovation of some sort.” The speakers were... more...