Fiction Books

The great advantage of being the fool of the family—My destiny is decided, and I am consigned to a stockbroker as part of his Majesty’s sea-stock—Unfortunately for me Mr Handycock is a bear, and I get very little dinner. If I cannot narrate a life of adventurous and daring exploits, fortunately I have no heavy crimes to confess: and, if I do not rise in the estimation of the reader for acts of... more...

The success of Verrian did not come early, and it did not come easily. He had been trying a long time to get his work into the best magazines, and when he had won the favor of the editors, whose interest he had perhaps had from the beginning, it might be said that they began to accept his work from their consciences, because in its way it was so good that they could not justly refuse it. The particular... more...

CHAPTER I      "From Wimbleton to Wombleton is fifteen miles,      From Wombleton to Wimbleton is fifteen miles,      From Wombleton to Wimbleton,      From Wimbleton to Wombleton,      From Wombleton—to Wimbleton—is fif—teen miles!" The cheery singing ended abruptly with the collapse of the singer upon a particularly inviting... more...

CHAPTER I NEWS With a crunching of the small stones in the gravel drive, the big car swung around to the side entrance of the house, and came to a stop, with a whining, screeching and, generally protesting sound of the brake-bands. A girl, bronzed by the summer sun, let her gloved hands fall from the steering wheel, for she had driven fast, and was tired. The motor ceased its humming, and, with a... more...

CHAPTER I. BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM ELECT. Firelight falling on soft velvet carpet, where white lily buds trail along azure ground, on chairs of white-polished wood that glitters like ivory, with puffy of seats of blue satin; on blue and gilt panelled walls; on a wonderfully carved oaken ceiling; on sweeping draperies of blue satin and white lace; on half a dozen lovely pictures; on an open piano; and last... more...

IN WHICH HARRY SWIFTLY PASSES FROM ONE STAGE OF HIS CAREER TO ANOTHER “Harry and I were waiting for his motor-car,” said the Honorable Socrates Potter. “He couldn’t stand and wait––that would be losing time––so we kept busy. Went into the stores and bought things––violets, candy, golf-balls, tennis-shoes, new gloves, and neckties. Harry didn’t need ’em, but he couldn’t waste... more...

CHAPTER 1 "Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am... more...

CHAPTER I. DOROTHY ARRIVES. "You may see her tonight," said Mrs. Sterling to her son Gilbert. "When does she arrive?" "At six-twenty this afternoon. They say, son, she is beautiful." "From what point of the compass does the lovely paragon come?" asked Sterling with a smile. "She has just graduated from some college in the North. Her father and mother went to be with... more...

M. LOUIS BLANC M. Louis Blanc, a democratic journalist, with all, and perhaps more than the usual talents of the Parisian journalist—with all, and more than the usual faults of one—has undertaken to write the history of his country, during and since the revolution of 1830. What can we expect to be the result of such an undertaking? What can we expect from a man who sits down to a task of this... more...

CHAPTER I Not until Mister Haggin abruptly picked him up under one arm and stepped into the sternsheets of the waiting whaleboat, did Jerry dream that anything untoward was to happen to him.  Mister Haggin was Jerry’s beloved master, and had been his beloved master for the six months of Jerry’s life.  Jerry did not know Mister Haggin as “master,” for “master” had no place in Jerry’s... more...