Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. LAUNCHING OF MY LIFE-BOAT.   Wild was the night, yet a wilder night    Hung around o'er the mother's pillow;  In her bosom there waged a fiercer fight    Than the fight on the wrathful billow. Already there were more children than potatoes in her hut of logs, and yet, another unwelcome guest was coming, to whom fate had ordained that it would have been money in his... more...

he sleek transcontinental airliner settled onto one of the maze of runways that was Stevenson Airport. With its turbojets fading into a dense roar, it taxied across the field toward the central building. Inside the plane a red light went off. Senator Vance Duran unhooked the seat belt, reached for his briefcase, and stepped into the crowded aisle. The other passengers were all strangers, which had... more...

PREFACE During the past half century the attitude of many men toward the Bible has undergone a decided change. The old confidence seems to be gone; a feeling of uncertainty and of unrest has taken its place. This small volume is intended to set forth the Christian view of the Old Testament, and to furnish answers to some of the questions men are asking concerning the Sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews,... more...

In the little town of Rodez, situated on the western side of the Cévennes and washed by the waters of the river Aveyron, there lived a lawyer by the name of Fualdes, a commonplace man, neither good nor bad. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he had only recently retired from affairs, and his finances were in such a bad shape that he was obliged, in the beginning of the year 1817, to dispose of his... more...

Part 1— Chapter I. They were seated together at the breakfast-table, a handsome, bored-looking man of thirty-three, and a girl of twenty-six, whose dress of a rich blue made an admirable touch of colour in the dim, brown room. The house had been designed in the period when shelter from the wind seems to have been the one desired good, and was therefore built in a dell, from which the garden rose in a... more...

CHAPTER I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GREAT CITY. "Give me the best morning paper you have, please." "The Tribune costs the most, if that is the one you want." "The price will be no objection providing the paper contains what I wish to find." "You want work, I s'pose." "Yes, I am looking for employment." "I knew it—just in from the country too," said... more...

INTRODUCTION Kálmán Mikszáth, perhaps the most purely national, certainly, after Jókai, the most popular of all the Magyar novelists, was born at Szklabonya, in the county of Nográd, on January 16th, 1849. Educated at Rimaszombáth and Pest, he adopted the legal profession, and settled down as a magistrate in his native county, where his family had for generations lived the placid, patriarchal... more...

INTRODUCTION. The sixty-fourth volume of this Library contains those papers from the Tatler which were especially associated with the imagined character of Isaac Bickerstaff, who was the central figure in that series; and in the twenty-ninth volume there is a similar collection of papers relating to the Spectator Club and Sir Roger de Coverley, who was the central figure in Steele and Addison’s... more...

PREFACE "Life is the mirror of the king and slave,'Tis just what you are and do.Then give to the world the best you have,And the best will come back to you." I never thought that I should be guilty of writing a book. I did not, however, do this with malice aforethought. My son is responsible for whatever sin I may have committed in presenting this to the public. He and I have been good... more...

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY We propose to introduce our 'Specimens' by a short Essay on the Origin and Progress of English Poetry on to the days of Chaucer and of Gower. Having called, in conjunction with many other critics, Chaucer 'the Father of English Poetry,' to seek to go back further may seem like pursuing antenatal researches. But while Chaucer was the sun, a certain glimmering dawn... more...