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...

The murder of Monty Paliser, headlined that morning in the papers, shook the metropolis at breakfast, buttered the toast, improved the taste of the coffee. Murdered! It seemed too bad to be false. Moreover, there was his picture, the portrait of a young man obviously high-bred and insolently good-looking. In addition to war news and the financial page, what more could you decently ask for a penny?... more...

CHARACTERS EUDEMIUS, a Roman lord living in BritainVARIA, his daughterLIVINIUS, a Roman citizen, a boyhood friend of EudemiusMARIUS, his son, of the Roman legions in Gaul [Guests of Eudemius]MARCUS SILENUS POMPONIUS, Count of the Saxon ShoreAURELIUS MENOTUS, duumvir of AnderidaFELIX, his sonCAIUS JULIUS VALENS, a Roman citizen [Roman girls, daughters of the guests of Eudemius]JULIANIGIDIAPAULAGRATIA... 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 Panthers or Bears? The defeat in the opening game of the final series of the season between the Panthers and Bears had been a hard blow to the championship hopes of the Bears, and its effect was evident in the demeanor of the players and those associated with them. It was the second week in September. Since early in May the Blues, the Panthers and the Bears, conceded to be the three strongest... more...

The editor-in-chief of the Maison Mazarin—a man of letters who cherishes an enthusiastic yet discriminating love for the literary and artistic glories of France—formed within the last two years the great project of collecting and presenting to the vast numbers of intelligent readers of whom New World boasts a series of those great and undying romances which, since 1784, have received the crown of... 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...