Fiction Books

In the future, we may discover new planets; our ships may rocket to new worlds; robots may be smarter than people. But we'll still have slick characters willing and able to turn a fast buck—even though they have to be smarter than Einstein to do it. Anson Drake sat quietly in the Flamebird Room of the Royal Gandyll Hotel, listening to the alien, but soothing strains of the native orchestra and... more...

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CHAPTER I The history of the circumstances about to be related began many years ago—or so it seems in these days. It began, at least, years before the world being rocked to and fro revealed in the pause between each of its heavings some startling suggestion of a new arrangement of its kaleidoscopic particles, and then immediately a re-arrangement, and another and another until all belief in a... more...

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. He cast, (of which we rather boast,) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast, And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. O let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which there perhaps rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexic bay. Thus sang they, in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note, And all the way to guide their chime,... more...

CHILD'S FIRST PICTURE BOOK     THE FIRE HORSES stand ready in their stalls, and at the sound of the alarm gong the stall chains are let down and each horse goes quickly to his place at the engine, and the big iron collars are clamped around their necks and off they go to the fire, with the engine, at break-neck speed.     THE AUTOMOBILE FIRE ENGINE can go to the fires very swiftly. Many times... more...

THE SHEEP COUNTRY So John Mackenzie had put his foot upon the road. This after he had reasoned it out as a mathematical problem, considering it as a matter of quantities alone. There was nothing in school-teaching at sixty dollars a month when men who had to carry a rubber stamp to sign their names to their checks were making fortunes all around him in sheep. That was the way it looked to John... more...

I Hilltop School closed its fall term with just ninety-five students; it opened again two weeks later, on the third of January, with ninety-six; and thereby hangs this tale. Kenneth Garwood had been booked for Hilltop in the autumn, but circumstances had interfered with the family's plans. Instead he journeyed to Moritzville on the afternoon of the day preceding the commencement of the new term, a... more...

In the old Stock of Fife, there was not perhaps an individual whose exertions were followed by consequences of such a remarkable nature as those of Davie Duff, popularly called "The Thane of Fife," who, from a very humble parentage, rose to fill one of the chairs of the magistracy of his native burgh. By industry and economy in early life, he obtained the means of erecting, solely on his own... more...

THE MYSTERIOUS WANDERER. CHAPTER I. "Of all the passions inherent in man, I think pride the most despicable, and for which he has the least excuse! If he have sense and abilities, they ought rather to guard his bosom from so contemptible an inmate, than implant it there. It is a passion insulting to reason, beneath the generosity of human nature, and in the highest degree degrading to the character... more...

PREFACE In undertaking to prepare an account of this celebrated trial, the Editor at the outset fondly trusted that the conviction of "the unfortunate Miss Blandy" might, upon due inquiry, be found to have been, as the phrase is, a miscarriage of justice. To the entertainment of this chivalrous if unlively hope he was moved as well by the youth, the sex, and the traditional charms of that lady,... more...