Fiction Books

CHAPTER ITHE CAUSES OF THE WARIn many quarters of the world, especially in certain sections of the British public, people believed that the German nation was led blindly into the World War by an unscrupulous military clique. Now, however, there is ample evidence to prove that the entire nation was thoroughly well informed of the course which events were taking, and also warned as to the catastrophe to... more...

  just lost a weekend. I ain't too anxious to find it. Instead, I sure wish I had gone fishing with McCarthy and the boys like I'd planned. I drive a beer truck for a living, but here it is almost noon Monday and I haven't turned a wheel. Sure, I get beer wholesale, and I have been known to take some advantage of my discount. But that wasn't what happened to this weekend. Instead... more...

CHAPTER I A TELEGRAM FROM PAUL STODDARD Up, up, my heart! Up, up, my heart,This day was made for thee!For soon the hawthorn spray shall part,And thou a face shalt seeThat comes, O heart, O foolish heart,This way to gladden thee.—H. C. Bunner. Stoddard's telegram was brought to me on the Glenarm pier at four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, the fifth of June. I am thus explicit, for all the... more...

CHAPTER I. It was a Sunday in the midsummer of 1869. The air, cleared by a thunderstorm the night before, was still tremulous with that soft, invigorating warmth which, farther south, makes breathing such an easy matter, but which, north of the Alps, seldom outlasts the early morning. And yet the bells, that sounded from the Munich Frauenkirche far across the Theresienwiese, and the field where stands... more...

Count Eustache d'Etchegorry's solitary country house had the appearance of a poor man's home, where people do not have enough to eat every day in the week, where the bottles are more frequently filled at the pump than in the cellar, and where they wait until it is dark before lighting the candles. It was an old and sordid building; the walls were crumbling to pieces, the grated, iron... more...

CHAPTER ISMILING SILENCEEvening was in the wood, still as the dreaming bracken, secretive, moving softly among the pines as a young witch gathering simples. She wore a hood of finely woven shadows, yet, though she drew it close, sunbeams trooping westward flashed strange lights across her haunted face. The birds that lived in the wood had broken out into sudden singing as she stole in, hungry for... more...

Stevenson was right. There is not a more admirable trait in one’s character than that of cheerfulness. Combined with that other virtue named by Stevenson, gentleness, and what more is needed to make a companionable and a beloved man. These two attributes were possessed in an emphatic way both by Stevenson and by Leigh Hunt. That’s why some of us are so fond of Hunt. That’s why he is growing in... more...

CHAPTER I. A REHEARSAL. When the curtain fell on the last act of "The Squire's Daughter," the comedy-opera that had taken all musical London by storm, a tall and elegant young English matron and her still taller brother rose from their places in the private box they had been occupying, and made ready to depart; and he had just assisted her to put on her long-skirted coat of rose-red plush... more...

Stephen Knight was very angry, though he meant to be kind and patient with Margot. Perhaps, after all, she had not given the interview to the newspaper reporter. It might be what she herself would call a "fake." But as for her coming to stop at a big, fashionable hotel like the Carlton, in the circumstances she could hardly have done anything in worse taste. He hated to think that she was... more...

CHAPTER I THE GOLDEN FEATHER "This was a pretty fair catch, for a change," thought Ralph Kenyon, as he tied the limp animal to his pack-saddle, and reset the trap, hoping next time to catch the dead mink's larger mate. He ran a quick, appraising eye over the load slung across Keno's broad back. "Pretty good, eh, old boy?" he added aloud, stroking the velvety nose of his dumb... more...