Fiction Books

nder the glow of Saturn and his Rings, five of the airdomes of the new colony on Titan were still inflated. They were enormous bubbles of clear, flexible plastic. But the sixth airdome had flattened. And beneath its collapsed roof, propped now by metal rods, a dozen men in spacesuits had just lost all hope of rescuing the victims of the accident. Bert Kraskow, once of Oklahoma City, more recently a... more...

CHAPTER I. OMENS, GOOD AND ILL. "Sairay! Sairay!" The high, petulant voice rose shrilly through the steep, narrow stairway, and seemed to pierce the ears of the young girl who sat under the low, sloping roof, nearly bent double over the book in her lap. She involuntarily raised both hands to her ears, as if the noise distressed her, then dropped them, straightened herself resolutely, and... more...

THE PROLOGUE I The resistless influences which are one day to reign supreme over our poor hearts, and to shape the sad short course of our lives, are sometimes of mysteriously remote origin, and find their devious ways to us through the hearts and the lives of strangers. While the young man whose troubled career it is here proposed to follow was wearing his first jacket, and bowling his first hoop, a... more...

EDITH TRIES TO EXPLAIN. “I do think Edith is the queerest girl I ever saw in all my life!” said Marty Ashford. “Don't jump up and down behind my chair that way, Marty,” said her mother; “you shake me so that I can scarcely hold my needle. What does Edith do that is so queer?” “Oh, she's always putting ten into things.” “Putting ten into things?” “Yes'm. I mean when... more...

MEMOIR OF THE LITERARY LIFE OF AUGUSTUS WILLIAM VON SCHLEGEL AUGUSTUS WILLIAM VON SCHLEGEL, the author of the following Lectures, was, with his no-less distinguished brother, Frederick, the son of John Adolph Schlegel, a native of Saxony, and descended from a noble family. Holding a high appointment in the Lutheran church, Adolph Schlegel distinguished himself as a religious poet, and was the friend... more...

VII SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields. Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length,... more...

CHAPTER I CONCERNING THE MAJOR'S CHERRIES "The Major, mam, the Major has a truly wonderful 'ead!" said Sergeant Zebedee Tring as he stood, hammer in hand, very neat and precise from broad shoe-buckles to smart curled wig that offset his square, bronzed face. "Head, Sergeant, head!" retorted pretty, dimpled Mrs. Agatha, nodding at the Sergeant's broad back. "'Ead... more...

CHAPTER I. Ou peut-on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?—French Song. [Where can on be better than in the bosom of one's family?] I am an only child. My father was the younger son of one of our oldest earls; my mother the dowerless daughter of a Scotch peer. Mr. Pelham was a moderate whig, and gave sumptuous dinners; Lady Frances was a woman of taste, and particularly fond of diamonds and... more...

Chapter One "For hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow in his steps." It was Friday morning and the Rev. Henry Maxwell was trying to finish his Sunday morning sermon. He had been interrupted several times and was growing nervous as the morning wore away, and the sermon grew very slowly toward a satisfactory finish.... more...

CHAPTER I. The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;My censer's breath the mountain airs,And silent thoughts my only prayers.MOORE The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye. The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable... more...