Fiction Books

Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable... more...

Out of Paradise f I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but go back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every... more...

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT, By Robert Louis Stevenson It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder... more...

PROSAIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.   There are some phrases that convey only a vague and indefinite meaning, that make an impression upon the mind so faint as to be scarcely resolvable into shape or character. Being associated, however, with the feeling of beauty or enjoyment, they are ever on our lips, and pass current in conversation at a conventional value. Of these phrases is the 'poetry of... more...

THE FOURTH MAN The raft might have been taken for a swath of cut sedge or a drifting tangle of roots as it slid out of the shadowy river mouth at dawn and dipped into the first ground swell. But while the sky brightened and the breeze came fresh offshore it picked a way among shoals and swampy islets with purpose and direction, and when at last the sun leaped up and cleared his bright eye of the... more...

PROLOGUE In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London. You would surely have thought that I had been detected in no less... more...

SHOEING THE BAY MARE Original Picture: National Gallery, London,            England. Artist: Sir Edwin Landseer (lănd´´sÄ“r). Birthplace: London, England. Dates: Born, 1802; died, 1873. Questions to arouse interest. What is the man in this picture doing? How many have watched a blacksmith shoe a horse? Why does he wear an apron made of leather? From what do the sparks fly?... more...

The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the mother's character had been more absolutely... more...

CHAPTER ONE In the first place, Mr. Yollop knew nothing about firearms. And so, after he had overpowered the burglar and relieved him of a fully loaded thirty-eight, he was singularly unimpressed by the following tribute from the bewildered and somewhat exasperated captive: "Say, ain't you got any more sense than to tackle a man with a gun, you chuckle-headed idiot?" (Only he did not say... more...

The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the... more...