Fiction Books

It happened in the beginning of the summer that Sigurd Erikson journeyed north into Esthonia to gather the king's taxes and tribute. His business in due course brought him into a certain seaport that stood upon the shores of the great Gulf of Finland. He was a very handsome man, tall and strong, with long fair hair and clear blue eyes. There were many armed servants in his following, for he was a... more...

The day was still no more than a ragged streak of red in the east; the pre-dawn air was sharply cold, making Johnny Youngbear's face feel slightly brittle as he dressed quietly in the gray bedroom. He sat down on the bed, pulling on his boots, and felt his wife stir sleepily beneath the covers. Suddenly she stiffened, sat upright in the bed, startled into wakefulness. Johnny put one dark, bony... more...

CHAPTER I THE BAITING OF THE ANCIENT LION War and Peace had swapped corners that morning in the village of Fort Canibas. War was muttering at the end where two meeting-houses placidly faced each other across the street. Peace brooded over the ancient blockhouse, relic of the "Bloodless War," and upon the structure that Thelismer Thornton had converted from officers' barracks to his own... more...

CHAPTER 1. TWO MEN AND A WOMAN "Mr. Ridgway, ma'am." The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very effective picture framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost imperceptibly. She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewd suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week to decide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new.... more...

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen, University of Brunn, to the Herr General Johann von Steppberg, retired. My dear General von Steppberg: It is with reluctance that I intrude upon your retirement, but at the request of the Government I have undertaken a scientific examination of the causes which brought about The Leader's rise to power, the extraordinary popularity of his regime, the... more...

COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES The principles established by the Rochdale Pioneers in England in 1844 and observed consistently by successful societies since that time are as follows: 1. Earnings of capital stock limited to legal or current rate of interest. 2. Surplus earnings to be returned to members in proportion to patronage. 3. One vote for each member regardless of amount of stock owned. No proxy voting... more...

INTRODUCTION. The Protagoras, like several of the Dialogues of Plato, is put into the mouth of Socrates, who describes a conversation which had taken place between himself and the great Sophist at the house of Callias—'the man who had spent more upon the Sophists than all the rest of the world'—and in which the learned Hippias and the grammarian Prodicus had also shared, as well as... more...

WHICH DESCRIBES, AMONG OTHER THINGS, A PAIR OF WHISKERS In the writing of books, as all the world knows, two things are above all other things essential—the one is to know exactly when and where to leave off, and the other to be equally certain when and where to begin. Now this book, naturally enough, begins with Mr. Brimberly's whiskers; begins at that moment when he coughed and pulled down his... more...

Those adventurous gentlemen who derive exhilaration from peril, and extract febrifuge for the high pressure of a too exuberant constitution from the difficulties of the Alps, cannot find such peaks as the Aiguille Verte and the Matterhorn, with their friable and precipitous cliffs, among the Rocky Mountains. The geological processes have been gentler in evolving the latter than the former, and in the... more...

CHAPTER I All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.  I have been aware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be.  Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of your childhood.  You were then not fixed, not crystallized.  You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an... more...