Fiction Books

AT THE BEGINNING. She was in the box; he was far above in the gallery. He looked down and across and saw her sitting there fair as a flower and robed like a royal courtesan in flame and snow. Like a red torch flamed the ruby in her hair. Her shoulders were framed in her cloak, white as marble warmed with firelight. Her gloved hands held an opera glass which also glowed with flashing light. His face... more...

"What do you make of it?" Commander Jed Hargraves asked huskily.Two planets circling Vega! But a more amazing discovery waited the explorers when they landed!Ron Val, busy at the telescope, was too excited to look up from the eye-piece. "There are at least two planets circling Vega!" he said quickly. "There may be other planets farther out, but I can see two plainly. And Jed, the... more...

Microtus montanus reaches the eastern limits of its geographic distribution in Wyoming and Colorado. There the mountains, but in general not the lowlands, are occupied by this species. A certain minimum of moisture may be of direct importance to the mouse and certainly is indirectly important, because certain hydrophytic or mesophytic grasses used by the mouse for food, for protection from enemies, and... more...

I O'DONOGHUE It was in a poor little cabin somewhere in Ireland. It does not matter where. The walls were of rough stone, the roof was of thatch, and the floor was the hard earth. There was very little furniture. Poor as it was, the whole place was clean. It is right to tell this, because, unhappily, a good many cabins in Ireland are not clean. What furniture there was had been rubbed smooth and... more...

Nine years have expired since the publication of the last Norwich Directory (which was out of print almost as soon as in); during which period, alterations have been constantly taking place in the residence of the inhabitants, independent of those which have been entirely removed by death or otherwise.  It will be found of those which were inserted in the former, and are still to be found in this, not... more...

CHAPTER I. AMAEL AND VORTIGERN. Towards the commencement of the month of November of the year 811, a numerous cavalcade was one afternoon wending its way to the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital of the Empire of Charles the Great—an Empire that had been so rapidly increased by rapidly succeeding conquests over Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Hungary, Italy and Spain, that Gaul, as formerly... more...

The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed ... but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero...? There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. But... more...

CHAPTER I. "Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?" "We find the prisoner guilty, my lord." A curious little thrill of emotion—half sigh, half sob—ran through the crowded court. Even the most callous, the most world-hardened, of human beings cannot hear unmoved the verdict which condemns a fellow-creature to a shameful death. The spectators of Andrew Westwood's trial... more...

CHAPTER I Prologue.—Miss Quincey Stops the Way "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. It came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy intellectual... more...

PREFACE. It must be that a too free association with American men of letters has moved the author of this book to add to his fine Gallic wit a touch of that preposterousness which is supposed to be characteristic of American humor. For proof of this, I cite the fact that he has asked me to introduce him upon this occasion. Surely there could be no more grotesque idea than that any word of mine can... more...