Fiction Books

obert Thorpe reached languidly for a cigarette and, with lazy fingers, extracted a lighter from his pocket. "Be a sport," he repeated to the gray haired man across the table. "Be a sport, Admiral, and send me across on a destroyer. Never been on a destroyer except in port. It ... would be a new experience ... enjoy it a lot...." In the palm-shaded veranda of this club-house in Manila,... more...

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY I One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in a clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia. He lay at full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the... more...

CHAPTER I "A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor." From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour. "Ten-thirty!" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please." I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of... more...

"They're crazy! They're insane! That mob outside is made up of madmen," Jacob Clark told his young assistant, Bill Towney. "They'll be battering at the door any minute now, sir," Towney said nervously. "But why? Why are they doing it? My inventions have advanced the world a hundred years. I've always been a benefactor of man, not a destroyer." "It's... more...

CHAPTER ONE No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that... more...

AIMS AND THE PLAN The author's main purpose in this book is to teach precision in writing; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking made visible) precision is the point of capital concern. It is attained by choice of the word that accurately and adequately expresses what the writer has in mind, and by exclusion of that which either denotes or connotes something else. As... more...

CHAPTER I. He was the most beautiful prince that ever was born. Being a prince, people said this; and it was true. When he looked at the candle, his eyes had an earnest expression quite startling in a new-born baby. His nose was aquiline; his complexion was healthy; he was round, fat, and straight-limbed—a splendid baby. His father and mother, King and Queen of Nomansland, and their subjects were... more...

INTRODUCTION. I was born within twelve miles of a principal tribe of Indians, within two miles of a small band, and within six miles of two other small bands, of that tribe. They were a remnant of the Pawkunnawkuts, who, at the first settlement of the country, were a very numerous, powerful, and warlike nation, but at the time of my birth had dwindled in numbers to about five hundred souls, and were... more...

I It was raining heavily and I fastened my overcoat to the neck as I came down the steps of the Government Building. Pushing through the crowds and clanging electric cars, at the Smithfield Street corner, I turned toward Penn Avenue and the Club, whose home is in a big, old-fashioned, grey-stone building—sole remnant of aristocracy in that section where, once, naught else had been. For three years I... more...

THE FALSE GEMS Monsieur Lantin had met the young girl at a reception at the house of the second head of his department, and had fallen head over heels in love with her. She was the daughter of a provincial tax collector, who had been dead several years. She and her mother came to live in Paris, where the latter, who made the acquaintance of some of the families in her neighborhood, hoped to find a... more...