Fiction Books

It was four o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Walter Majendie still lay on the extreme edge of the bed, with her face turned to the dim line of sea discernible through the open window of the hotel bedroom. Since midnight, when she had gone to bed, she had lain in that uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake. Mrs. Walter Majendie was thinking. At first the night had gone by her... more...

You hear a lot of talk these days about secret weapons. If it's not a new wrinkle in nuclear fission, it's a gun to shoot around corners and down winding staircases. Or maybe a nice new strain of bacteria guaranteed to give you radio-active dandruff. Our own suggestion is to pipe a few of our television commercials into Russia and bore the enemy to death. Well, it seems that Ivar Jorgensen... more...

CHAPTER I THE COMING OF THE SHEEP From his seat on the top of a high ridge, Gordon Wade looked into the bowl-shaped valley beneath him, with an expression of amazement on his sun-burned face. Pouring through a narrow opening in the environing hills, and immediately spreading fan-like over the grass of the valley, were sheep; hundreds, thousands of them. Even where he sat, a good quarter mile above... more...

CHAPTER I. Something unusual was going on at division headquarters. The men in the nearest regimental camps, regular and volunteer, were “lined up” along the sentry posts and silently, eagerly watching and waiting. For a week rumor had been rife that orders for a move were coming and the brigades hailed it with delight. For a month, shivering at night in the dripping, drenching fogs drifting in... more...

Gefty Rammer came along the narrow passages between the Silver Queen's control compartment and the staterooms, trying to exchange the haggard look on his face for one of competent self-assurance. There was nothing to gain by letting his two passengers suspect that during the past few minutes their pilot, the owner of Rammer Spacelines, had been a bare step away from plain and fancy gibbering. He... more...

A LEADER FROM A FOREIGN NEWSPAPER: THE NEW RUSSIAN MANIFESTO. Mention was recently made, in Vol. ix., p. 218., of the valuable character of many of the leading articles in the continental journals, and a wish expressed that translations of them were more frequently communicated in our own papers to English readers. The great newspapers of this country are too rich in varied talent and worldwide... more...

From above came the sound of men singing. Captain Duke O'Neill stopped clipping his heavy black beard to listen. It had been a long time since he'd heard such a sound—longer than the time since he'd last had a bath or seen a woman. It had never been the singing type of war. Yet now even the high tenor of old Teroini, who lay on a pad with neither legs nor arms, was mixed into the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE METAMORPHOSIS. NEW YORK, Sunday, Dec. 16. I am going to set down as calmly and fully as I can a plain statement of all that has happened since I came to New York. I shall not trim details, nor soften the facts to humour my own amazement, nor try to explain the marvel that I do not pretend to understand. I begin at the beginning—at the plunge into fairy tale and miracle that I made,... more...

Arthur Duryea, a young, handsome man, came to meet his father for the first time in twenty years. As he strode into the hotel lobby—long strides which had the spring of elastic in them—idle eyes lifted to appraise him, for he was an impressive figure, somehow grim with exaltation. The desk clerk looked up with his habitual smile of expectation; how-do-you-do-Mr.-so-and-so, and his fingers strayed... more...

CHAPTER I. On Calais quay—At the Custom-house—A lady of the past—Ungallant examiner—Better to reign than serve—Paris—Vanity Fair—Sowing and reaping—Laughing through life—At the Hôtel Chatham—A pleasant picture—In maiden meditation—M. Pascal is wise in his generation—The secrets of the Seine—Notre Dame—Ile St. Louis—A mediæval atmosphere—Victor Hugo—Ghosts of the... more...