Fiction Books

They had marched more than thirty kilometres since dawn, along the white, hot road where occasional thickets of trees threw a moment of shade, then out into the glare again. On either hand, the valley, wide and shallow, glittered with heat; dark green patches of rye, pale young corn, fallow and meadow and black pine woods spread in a dull, hot diagram under a glistening sky. But right in front the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE DETECTIVE AND THE BANKER—A REMARKABLE NARRATIVE—A PECULIAR TRAIL—MILLIONS WITH NO OWNER—A GREAT TASK LOOMING UP FOR JACK—A MOMENT OF EXPECTANCY. "Your name is John Alvarez?" "That is my name, sir." An elderly man was seated at a table and a young man stood opposite to him. The elderly person was a well-known banker who had retired from business, and he had sent... more...

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY Translated from the original MS. by Mark Twain [NOTE.—I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently important as a public character to justify this... more...

CHAPTER I Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar. It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him before he could find one. At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was stricken with a wild... more...

THE RAY FAMILY.  There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees;—for whom the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is absolutely necessary;—who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves towards some such prop for their life, creeping with their tendrils along the ground till they reach it when the circumstances of life have brought no such prop within their... more...

CHAPTER I. In Which We Begin Not to Understand It is not without a certain emotion that I begin to recount here the extraordinary adventures of Joseph Rouletabille. Down to the present time he had so firmly opposed my doing it that I had come to despair of ever publishing the most curious of police stories of the past fifteen years. I had even imagined that the public would never know the whole truth... more...

They burned a witch in Bingham SquareLast Friday afternoon.The faggot-smoke was blacker thanThe shadows on the moon;The licking flames were strangely greenLike fox-fire on the fen ...And she who cursed the godly folkWill never curse again.They burned a witch in Bingham SquareBefore the village gate.A huswife raised a skinny handTo damn her, tense with hate.A huckster threw a jagged stone—Her pallid... more...

BARBOX BROTHERS I “Guard!  What place is this?” “Mugby Junction, sir.” “A windy place!” “Yes, it mostly is, sir.” “And looks comfortless indeed!” “Yes, it generally does, sir.” “Is it a rainy night still?” “Pours, sir.” “Open the door.  I’ll get out.” “You’ll have, sir,” said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and looking at the tearful face of his... more...

NEW YORK, Saturday, October 12, 1878. Bang! click! the desk closes, the key turns, and good-bye for a year to my wards—that goodly cluster over which I have watched with parental solicitude for many a day; their several cribs full of records and labelled Union Iron Mills, Lucy Furnaces, Keystone Bridge Works, Union Forge, Cokevale Works, and last, but not least, that infant Hercules, the Edgar... more...

ON HELL-FER-SARTAIN CREEK Thar was a dancin'-party Christmas night on "Hell fer Sartain." Jes tu'n up the fust crick beyond the bend thar, an' climb onto a stump, an' holler about ONCE, an' you'll see how the name come. Stranger, hit's HELL fer sartain! Well, Rich Harp was thar from the head-waters, an' Harve Hall toted Nance Osborn clean across the... more...