Fiction Books

hat? Oh, that's a perspective machine. Well, not exactly, but that's what I call it. No, I don't know how it works. Too complicated for me. Carter could make it go, but after he made it he never used it. Too bad; he thought he'd make a lot of money with it there for awhile, while he was working it out. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, "Get it to working first, Carter,... more...

CHAPTER I THE SYSTEM Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning... more...

CHAPTER I It was the day of the private view at the Royal Academy. The great courtyard of Burlington House was full of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests was pressing up the red-carpeted stairs, over which presided some of the most imposing individuals known to the eyes of Londoners, second only to Her Majesty's beefeaters in glory of scarlet apparel. Inside, however, as it was not yet... more...

THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE I They were getting some of their things out to send into the country, and Forsyth had left his work to help his wife look them over and decide which to take and which to leave. The things were mostly trunks that they had stored the fall before; there were some tables and Colonial bureaus inherited from his mother, and some mirrors and decorative odds and ends, which they... more...

"Prepare for battle!" The command crackled in Allan Dane's helmet. "Enemy approaching from southeast! Squadron commanders execute plan two!" Allan settled back in the seat of his one-man helicopter, his broad frame rendered even bulkier by the leather suit that incased it. He was tensed, but quiescent. Action would be first joined sixty miles away, and his own squadron was in... more...

The fact that newspaper reporters commonly call their articles "stories" points to a certain analogy between the novel and the newspaper. Even when prose fiction aims to be a fine art, it readily takes on a journalistic character; it is usually designed for immediate effect--at the concomitant risk of producing no other--and it easily passes from hand to hand or from country to country. In our... more...

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. Long, long ago, in ancient times, there lived a King and Queen,And for the blessing of a child their longing sore had been:At last, a little daughter fair, to their great joy, was given,And to the christening feast they made, they bade the Fairies seven— The Fairies seven, who loved the land—that they the child might bless,Yet one old Fairy they left out, in pure... more...

CHAPTER I OUT FOR BUSINESS "Look! What does that mean, Tom?" "It means that fellow wants to ruin the Yankee plane, and perhaps finish the flier who went down with it to the ground." "Not if we can prevent it, I say. Take a nosedive, Tom, and leave it to me to manage the gun!" "He isn't alone, Jack, for I saw a second skulker in the brush,I'm sure."... more...

Salem, June 15, 1835.—A walk down to the Juniper. The shore of the coves strewn with bunches of sea-weed, driven in by recent winds. Eel-grass, rolled and bundled up, and entangled with it,—large marine vegetables, of an olive-color, with round, slender, snake-like stalks, four or five feet long, and nearly two feet broad: these are the herbage of the deep sea. Shoals of fishes, at a little... more...

ACT I The scene is the blue and white room in the house of the Misses Susan and Phoebe Throssel in Quality Street; and in this little country town there is a satisfaction about living in Quality Street which even religion cannot give. Through the bowed window at the back we have a glimpse of the street. It is pleasantly broad and grass-grown, and is linked to the outer world by one demure shop, whose... more...