Fiction Books

Michelangelo's Shoulder It dawned hot in Georgia. Don rubbed his head and blinked. He got out of bed and paused before a makeshift easel where a drawing, taped to a board, showed a woman sitting on a park bench. She was large, dressed in layers of multi-colored cotton. She reminded him of the Renoir woman in her plush living room, the dog sprawled at her feet, but she was smarter. The line across... more...

CHAPTER I. HOW A PARTY OF TRAVELLERS SET OUT ON A JOURNEY. The train for the North was about to start from Madrid, and the station was filled with the usual varied and bustling crowd. Throngs of soldiers were there; throngs of priests; throngs of civilians; throngs of peasants; all moving to and fro, intermingled with the railway employés, and showing the power of steam to stir up even the lazy... more...

CHAPTER I Introduces the Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's Government at Nassau, New Providence, Bahama Islands. Some few years ago—to be precise, it was during the summer of 1903—I was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of... more...

"Hai—Yai, so bright a day, so clear!" said Mitiahwe as she entered the big lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of a grizzly which had fallen to her man's rifle. "Hai-yai, I wish it would last for ever—so sweet!" she added, smoothing the fur lingeringly, and showing her teeth in a smile. "There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the... more...

I. CHARACTERISTICS. A survey of ethical thought, especially English ethical thought, during the last century would have to lay stress upon one characteristic feature. It was limited in range,—limited, one may say, by its regard for the importance of the facts with which it had to deal. The thought of the period was certainly not without controversy; it was indeed controversial almost to a fault. But... more...

ACCEPTING A CHALLENGE "Hello! what brought you here, Frank Haywood, I'd like to know?" "Well, I reckon my horse, Buckskin, did, Peg." "And who's this with you—your new chum; the boy from Kentucky?" "That's who it is, Peg—Bob Archer; and he's come out West to see how life on the plains suits him." "Oh! a greenhorn, eh?" "Perhaps some... more...

It is now some generations since Josh Billings, Ned Buntline, and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, intimate friends of Colonel William F. Cody, used to forgather in the office of Francis S. Smith, then proprietor of the New York Weekly. It was a dingy little office on Rose Street, New York, but the breath of the great outdoors stirred there when these old-timers got together. As a result of these... more...

CHAPTER I. THE HOME OF OUR FATHERS "I do like a road, because you can be always wondering what is at the end of it." The Story Girl said that once upon a time. Felix and I, on the May morning when we left Toronto for Prince Edward Island, had not then heard her say it, and, indeed, were but barely aware of the existence of such a person as the Story Girl. We did not know her at all under that... more...

Being in a state of utter mystification, (a very disagreeable state, by-the-bye,) I hold it advisable to lay my unhappy case, in strict confidence, in the lowest possible whisper, and quite in a corner, before my kind friend, patron, and protector, the public, through whose means—for now-a-days every body knows everything, and there is no riddle so dark but shall find an OEdipus to solve it—I may... more...

CHAPTER I. RACHEL FROST. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, drawing towards the horizon, fell on a fair scene of country life; flickering through the young foliage of the oak and lime trees, touching the budding hedges, resting on the growing grass, all so lovely in their early green, and lighting up with flashes of yellow fire the windows of the fine mansion, that, rising on a gentle eminence,... more...