Fiction Books

Mrs. Lander went to a hotel in New York where she had been in the habit of staying with her husband, on their way South or North. The clerk knew her, and shook hands with her across the register, and said she could have her old rooms if she wanted them; the bell-boy who took up their hand-baggage recalled himself to her; the elevator-boy welcomed her with a smile of remembrance. Since she was already... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ACCIDENT. THE soft twilight of the tropics, that loves to linger over the low latitudes, after the departure of the long summer's day, was breathing in zephyrs of aromatic sweetness over the shores and plains of the beautiful Queen of the Antilles. The noise and bustle of the day had given place to the quiet and gentle influences of the hour; the slave had laid by his implements of... more...

he ruler of a planet with a black dwarf sun had called a meeting of the council. It was some time before they were assembled, and he waited patiently without thought. When the patchwork of mentalities was complete he allowed the conclusions of the prognosticator to occupy his mind. A wall of unanimous incredulity sprang up. The statement was that when the inhabitants of a distant planet achieved space... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ARTICLED PUPIL. 'Where is Miss Palliser?' inquired Miss Pew, in that awful voice of hers, at which the class-room trembled, as at unexpected thunder. A murmur ran along the desks, from girl to girl, and then some one, near that end of the long room which was sacred to Miss Pew and her lieutenants, said that Miss Palliser was not in the class-room. 'I think she is taking... more...

Chapter I."What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?Or shall we on without apology." The fine estuary which penetrates the American coast, between the fortieth and forty-first degrees of latitude, is formed by the confluence of the Hudson, the Hackensack, the Passaic, the Raritan, and a multitude of smaller streams; all of which pour their tribute into the ocean, within the space named.... more...

CHAPTER I BAD TRAINING FOR A KNIGHT Egbert Haldane had an enemy who loved him very dearly, and he sincerely returned her affection, as he was in duty bound, since she was his mother. If, inspired by hate and malice, Mrs. Haldane had brooded over but one question at the cradle of her child, How can I most surely destroy this boy? she could scarcely have set about the task more skilfully and... more...

BOOK I A MISCELLANY I - LA MARE DES FEES The leaves rain down upon the forest pond,An elfin tarn green-shadowed in the fern;Nine yews ensomber the wet bank, beyondThe autumn branches of the beeches burnWith yellow flame and red amid the green,And patches of the darkening sky between. This is an ancient country; in this woodThe Druids raised their sacrificial stones;Here the vast timeless silences still... more...

"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY" A young woman was crying bitterly in the waiting-room of the railway station at Upper Asquewan Falls, New York. A beautiful young woman? That is exactly what Billy Magee wanted to know as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The... more...

When you're commanding a spaceship over a mile long, and armed to the teeth, you don't exactly expect to be told to get the hell out ...The ship, for reasons that had to do with the politics of appropriations, was named Senator Joseph L. Holloway, but the press and the public called her Big Joe. Her captain, six-star Admiral Heselton, thought of her as Great Big Joe, and never fully got over... more...

There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic Guards. The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at their goal, hunched and silent, bundled up in a greatcoat against the coolness of space—a greatcoat which he would never need again after this morning. The brim of his hat was pulled down far over his... more...