Fiction Books

BOOK I SYLVIA AS WIFE 1. I am telling the story of Sylvia Castleman. I should prefer to tell it without mention of myself; but it was written in the book of fate that I should be a decisive factor in her life, and so her story pre-supposes mine. I imagine the impatience of a reader, who is promised a heroine out of a romantic and picturesque "society" world, and finds himself beginning with the... more...

A DESCENT ON LONDON On a day in August, in one of those swiftly-moving years which hurried Europe towards the catastrophe awaiting it, there arrived in London a couple of unusual appearance, striking, charming, and amusing. The man was tall, big, and queerly compounded of sensitive beauty and stodgy awkwardness. He entered London with an air of hostility; sniffed distastefully the smells of the... more...

OFF TO WAR The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; the place, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which lay at the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, and still preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence. Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to the front trains of soldiers singing and hallooing,... more...

INTRODUCTION. The history of the Utah Batteries should be a plain tale, for deeds of valor cannot be garnished by the flower of rhetoric or the pomp of oratory. This is a simple story of brave deeds. The stern browed Heracles standing unarmed in the midst of his countrymen was a frank, common figure, but when he dashed like Ares upon the Lerneaen hydra he became majestic, and no mere pen picture could... more...

CHAPTER ONE IN WHICH THE CONEY ISLAND MICROBEENTERS OUR QUIET HOME When Serenus Gowdey got back last fall from Brooklyn, where his twin brother, Sylvester, lives, he couldn’t talk about anything but Coney Island. He slighted religion, stopped runnin’ down relations, politics wuz left in the lurch, and cows, hens, and crops, wuz to him as if they wuzn’t. He acted crazy as a loon about that Island.... more...

The black-emerald water swirled and broke in many silver gleamings. From the misty center of the pool rose a vast but beautiful head. The long dripping hair was not hair, but had a rippling life of its own. The great lonely eyes and wide scarlet mouth were far more lovely than any human's. The gleaming green shoulders and shapely long arms ended in graceful webbed fingers. The red tipped breasts... more...

Introduction. i. St. Paul's great Epistle to the Romans was written, as may be quite confidently asserted, from Corinth, during the second visit to Greece recorded in the Acts[], i.e. in the beginning of the year commonly reckoned 58, but perhaps more correctly 56 A.D.—the year following the writing of the Epistles to the Corinthians. The reasons for this confident statement, and indeed for all... more...

VICTOR READS THE FATEFUL STAR Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the Sunday morning Star between them. "See... more...

SOCIETY for PURE ENGLISH (S.P.E.) The Society was founded in 1913, and was preparing to enter on its activities, when the declaration of war in Aug. 1914 determined the Committee to suspend proceedings until the national distraction should have abated. They met again after the Armistice in 1918 and agreed to announce their first issues for October 1919. Although present conditions are not as favourable... more...

CHAPTER I PIRATE MISSILE Tense, excited men gazed spaceward from the ships and planes of the South Atlantic task force. Other watchers waited breathlessly in the control room of the ship Recoverer. Among these was Tom Swift Jr. "How close to earth is our Jupiter probe missile?" Bud Barclay asked Tom excitedly. The lanky blond youth beside him, in T shirt and slacks, shot a glance at the dials... more...