Fiction Books

CHAPTER ONE: OMAS, ALICE, AND LINNA I don't suppose there is any use in trying to find out when the game of "Jack Stones" was first played. No one can tell. It certainly is a good many hundred years old. All boys and girls know how to play it. There is the little rubber ball, which you toss in the air, catch up one of the odd iron prongs, without touching another, and while the ball is... more...

Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned,but the fury of a biochemist scorned is just as great—and much more fiendish.If the Syndicate is half as powerful as some people have claimed, they'll murder me any day now. I object on principle to being killed by evil men for a good deed, so maybe lynching by stupid ones is preferable. I mean you, and you—the suetheads who profited by my work, but... more...

CHAPTER I The soft, muffling dusk settled slowly downward from the darkening blue sky and little by little smothered the weird gleam that rose from the gray-white plain. Away toward the east a range of mountains gloomed faintly, rimming the distance. Another towered against the western horizon. Cactus clumps and bunches of mesquite and greasewood blotted the whitely gleaming earth. In and out among... more...

Much has been written by critics, especially by those in Germany (the native land of criticism), upon the important question, whether to please or to instruct should be the end of Fiction—whether a moral purpose is or is not in harmony with the undidactic spirit perceptible in the higher works of the imagination. And the general result of the discussion has been in favour of those who have contended... more...

I. Little Agnes.    "And she, not seven years old,   A slighted child."—WORDSWORTH. "What is it Lewie wants? Does he want sister's pretty book?" "No!" roared the cross baby boy, pointing with his finger to the side-board. "Well, see here, Lewie! here is a pretty ball; shall we roll it? There! now roll it back to sister." "No-o-o!" still screamed... more...

It is doubtful if Aggie and I would have known anything about Tish's plan had Aggie not seen the advertisement in the newspaper. She came to my house at once in violent excitement and with her bonnet over her ear, and gave me the newspaper clipping to read. It said: "Wanted: A small donkey. Must be gentle, female, and if possible answer to the name of Modestine. Address X 27, Morning... more...

CHAPTER I GUY CARLETON 1724-1759 Guy Carleton, first Baron Dorchester, was born at Strabane, County Tyrone, on the 3rd of September 1724, the anniversary of Cromwell's two great victories and death. He came of a very old family of English country gentlemen which had migrated to Ireland in the seventeenth century and intermarried with other Anglo-Irish families equally devoted to the service of the... more...

INTRODUCTION "His varied life is toss'd on Faction's wave, A leader now, and now a party's slave; And shall his character a waverer's seem? If that's a fault, impute it not to him; He play'd a stake, and fortune threw the die; So look upon him with a brother's eye. We would for him an interest create, His own his virtues, and his faults his fate." Schiller.... more...

CHAPTER I. HISTORIC NOTICES OF VOLCANIC ACTION. There are no manifestations of the forces of Nature more calculated to inspire us with feelings of awe and admiration than volcanic eruptions preceded or accompanied, as they generally are, by earthquake shocks. Few agents have been so destructive in their effects; and to the real dangers which follow such terrestrial convulsions are to be added the... more...

SPANIEL AND NEWFOUNDLAND DOGS.A French writer has boldly affirmed, that with the exception of women there is nothing on earth so agreeable, or so necessary to the comfort of man, as the dog. This assertion may readily be disputed, but still it will be allowed that man, deprived of the companionship and services of the dog, would be a solitary and, in many respects, a helpless being. Let us look at the... more...