Fiction Books

ell, yes," Amspaugh admitted, "it was a unique war in many ways, including its origin. However, there are so many analogies to other colonial revolutions—" His words trailed off as usual. "I know. Earth's mercantile policies and so forth," said Lindgren. He fancies himself a student of interplanetary history. This has led to quite a few arguments since Amspaugh, who teaches... more...

CHAPTER I TREE-PLANTING Land hunger is so general that it may be regarded as a natural craving. Artificial modes of life, it is true, can destroy it, but it is apt to reassert itself in later generations. To tens of thousands of bread-winners in cities a country home is the dream of the future, the crown and reward of their life-toil. Increasing numbers are taking what would seem to be the wiser... more...

Chapter I. Into the Primitive "Old longings nomadic leap,Chafing at custom's chain;Again from its brumal sleepWakens the ferine strain." Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness,... more...

CHAPTER I. "Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?" said Lady Langdale to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the crush-room of the opera-house. "Oh, yes! every body's to be there, I hear," replied Mrs. Dareville."Your ladyship, of course?" "Why, I don't know; if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a point with... more...

An Empty Room The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a... more...

CHAPTER I The trouble from which great events were to come began when Everard Dominey, who had been fighting his way through the scrub for the last three quarters of an hour towards those thin, spiral wisps of smoke, urged his pony to a last despairing effort and came crashing through the great oleander shrub to pitch forward on his head in the little clearing. It developed the next morning, when he... more...

Sheets of virgin manuscript paper littered my desk, the smoke of much uselessly consumed tobacco hung about the room in a little cloud. Many a time I had dipped my pen in the ink, only to find myself a few minutes later scrawling ridiculous little figures upon the margin of my blotting-pad. It was not at all an auspicious start for one who sought immortality. There came a growl presently from the other... more...

THE RAY FAMILY.  There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees;—for whom the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is absolutely necessary;—who, in their growth, will bend and incline themselves towards some such prop for their life, creeping with their tendrils along the ground till they reach it when the circumstances of life have brought no such prop within their... more...

HIS DEAD WIFE'S PHOTOGRAPH. This story created a sensation when it was first told. It appeared in the papers and many big Physicists and Natural Philosophers were, at least so they thought, able to explain the phenomenon. I shall narrate the event and also tell the reader what explanation was given, and let him draw his own conclusions. This was what happened. A friend of mine, a clerk in the same... more...

E'RE losing a planet, Neel. I'm afraid that I can't ... understand it." The bald and wrinkled head wobbled a bit on the thin neck, and his eyes were moist. Abravanel was a very old man. Looking at him, Neel realized for the first time just how old and close to death he was. It was a profoundly shocking thought. "Pardon me, sir," Neel broke in, "but is it possible? To lose... more...