Fiction Books

CHAPTER FIRST. Wiser Raymondus, in his closet pent,Laughs at such danger and adventurementWhen half his lands are spent in golden smoke,And now his second hopeful glasse is broke,But yet, if haply his third furnace hold,Devoteth all his pots and pans to gold.* * The author cannot remember where these lines are to be found: perhaps in Bishop Hall's Satires. [They occur in Book iv. Satire iii.]... more...

INTRODUCTION The present work completes a series of fictitious narratives, intended to illustrate the manners of Scotland at three different periods. Waverley embraced the age of our fathers, Guy Mannering that of our own youth, and the Antiquary refers to the last ten years of the eighteenth century. I have, in the two last narratives especially, sought my principal personages in the class of society... more...

CHAPTER FIRST. Go call a coach, and let a coach be called,And let the man who calleth be the caller;And in his calling let him nothing call,But Coach! Coach! Coach! O for a coach, ye gods!Chrononhotonthologos. It was early on a fine summer's day, near the end of the eighteenth century, when a young man, of genteel appearance, journeying towards the north-east of Scotland, provided himself with a... more...

AM I NOT A MAN AND BROTHER? AIR—Bride's Farewell. Am I not a man and brother?  Ought I not, then, to be free?Sell me not one to another,  Take not thus my liberty.Christ our Saviour, Christ our Saviour,  Died for me as well as thee. Am I not a man and brother?  Have I not a soul to save?Oh, do not my spirit smother,  Making me a wretched slave;God of mercy, God of... more...

For a moment, after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded. "Are you there, Lee?" he heard Alexis Pitov's voice. "Yes, I'm here. What time is it?" he asked, and then added, "I fell asleep. I was... more...

I.—Its Name and Its Antiquity Willenhall, vulgo Willnal, is undoubtedly a place of great antiquity; on the evidence of its name it manifestly had its foundation in an early Saxon settlement.  The Anglo-Saxon form of the name Willanhale may be interpreted as “the meadow land of Willa”—Willa being a personal name, probably that of the tribal leader, the head of a Teutonic family, who settled... more...

CHAPTER XXVI YEAR 1785 Well may we say, in the pious words of my old friend and neighbour, the Reverend Mr Keekie of Loupinton, that the world is such a wheel- carriage, that it might very properly be called the WHIRL'D. This reflection was brought home to me in a very striking manner, while I was preparing a discourse for my people, to be preached on the anniversary day of my placing, in which I... more...

To make it clear how normal everything was when the evening started out, I'll let you in at the time Willy phoned me. I was in my apartment with a lady from down the hall.... I had asked her what she liked and she'd purred, "You." I had asked her with soda or gingerale and she'd said, "Straight," so I'd obliged and poured myself a triple too and sank into the sofa... more...

The third night of the Marco Four's landfall on the moonless Altarian planet was a repetition of the two before it, a nine-hour intermission of drowsy, pastoral peace. Navigator Arthur Farrell—it was his turn to stand watch—was sitting at an open-side port with a magnoscanner ready; but in spite of his vigilance he had not exposed a film when the inevitable pre-dawn rainbow began to shimmer... more...

Introduction I have been asked to write an introduction to the story of "The Bowmen", on its publication in book form together with three other tales of similar fashion. And I hesitate. This affair of "The Bowmen" has been such an odd one from first to last, so many queer complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and... more...