Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. THE MOVEMENT AND THE MAN. In the year 1884 the Republic of Aureataland was certainly not in a flourishing condition. Although most happily situated (it lies on the coast of South America, rather to the north—I mustn't be more definite), and gifted with an extensive territory, nearly as big as Yorkshire, it had yet failed to make that material progress which had been hoped by its... more...

Bones of a large number of vertebrates of Pleistocene age have been removed from San Josecito Cave near Aramberri, Nuevo León, México. These bones have been reported upon in part by Stock (1942) and Cushing (1945). A part of this material, on loan to the University of Kansas from the California Institute of Technology, contains 26 rami and one rostrum of soricid insectivores. Nothing seems to be... more...

You may say that there was something wrong somewhere, some mistake, from the very beginning, in his parentage, in the time and place and manner of his birth. It was in the early eighties, over a shabby chemist's shop in Wandsworth High Street, and it came of the union of Fulleymore Ransome, a little, middle-aged chemist, weedy, parched, furtively inebriate, and his wife Emma, the daughter of John... more...

A WHITE ROSE Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy she was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the hotel. With each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to do, loomed blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the door of the lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside. There was time still to change her mind. She had only to... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WAGER "Speak of the Devil," whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by the words and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair. 1The door had opened, and under the lintel stood the thick-set figure of the Comte de Chatellerault. Before him a lacquey in my escutcheoned livery of red-and-gold was receiving, with back obsequiously bent, his hat and cloak. A sudden... more...

WHERE UNION DWELT Beside the deep ravine the cottage stood,O'erlooking elm and willow, beech and birch,In growth profuse and wild o'er shady stream:And viewing cedar, oak and towering pineOn yonder crest aglow with light. How grandThe vision in the greenness of the spring,When birds of blue and scarlet vestments come;The greater glory of the summer time,When twinkling wings outvie the rarest... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Few literatures have exerted so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provençal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and... more...

THE DEACON'S DILEMMA Miss Clegg was getting her own favorite tea. This always consisted of itself, toast, and a slice of bacon; and she apparently took as much pleasure in the preparation of the meal as if it were not the ten thousandth of its kind which she had cooked and eaten. As she hustled and bustled here and there, her manner seemed even more sprightly than usual; and it was only... more...

DONALD MACDONALD, M.D. The man came to a stop, a look of humiliation and deep self-disgust on his bronzed face. With methodical care he leaned his rifle against the seamed trunk of a forest patriarch and drew the sleeve of his hunting shirt across his forehead, now glistening with beads of sweat; then, and not until then, did he relieve his injured feelings by giving voice to a short but... more...

CHAPTER FIRST THE MARCH OF THE MINUTE MEN The first beams of the sun of August 17, 1777, were glancing down the long valley, which opening to the East, lets in the early rays of morning, upon the village of Stockbridge. Then, as now, the Housatonic crept still and darkling around the beetling base of Fisher's Nest, and in the meadows laughed above its pebbly shoals, embracing the verdant fields... more...