Fiction Books

THE FOUNTAIN OF THE HINDS. A spring of living water, known in the neighborhood by the appropriate name of the "Fountain of the Hinds," empties its trickling stream under the oaks of one of the most secret recesses of the forest of Compiegne. Stags and hinds, deers and does, bucks and she-goats come to water at the spot, leaving behind them numerous imprints of their steps on the borders of the... more...

CHAPTER I. ALLAN LEARNS FRENCH Although in my old age I, Allan Quatermain, have taken to writing—after a fashion—never yet have I set down a single word of the tale of my first love and of the adventures that are grouped around her beautiful and tragic history. I suppose this is because it has always seemed to me too holy and far-off a matter—as holy and far-off as is that heaven which holds the... more...

A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home ... literally! The leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged... more...

CHAPTER I HOW PAUL MARTEL FELL OUT WITH SERCQ To give you a clear understanding of matters I must begin at the beginning and set things down in their proper order, though, as you will see, that was not by any means the way in which I myself came to learn them. For my mother and my grandfather were not given to overmuch talk at the best of times, and all my boyish questionings concerning my father left... more...

CHAPTER I. THE NEW ARRIVAL AT GOLD CITY. The stage was late at Gold City. It always was. Everybody knew it, but everybody pretended to expect it on time. Just exactly as the old court-house bell up the hill struck six, the postmistress hurriedly opened her door and stood anxiously peering up the street, the loafers who had been dozing on the saloon benches shuffled out and leaned up against the posts,... more...

The Rake's Progress I borrow De Quincey's Confessionsof an Opium Eater, the aforementionedan account of that singularOriental vice,whereupon misplacing the volumein transitfrom the checkpoint, I attemptto capsulizethe book's misadventures only tosuffer taciturnityon the part of the staff until,the duplicityof a continued numbers game inChinese wearingthin and with lassitude similar tothe... more...

I. Edward Tyson, the author of the Essay with which this book is concerned, was, on the authority of Monk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, born, according to some accounts, at Bristol, according to others, at Clevedon, co. Somerset, but was descended from a family which had long settled in Cumberland. He was educated at Magdalene Hall, Oxford, as a member of which he proceeded Bachelor... more...

The doctor's pen paused over the chart on his desk, "This is your third set of teeth, I believe?" His patient nodded, "That's right, Doctor. But they were pretty slow coming in this time." The doctor looked up quizzically, "Is that the only reason you think you might need a booster shot?" "Oh, no ... of course not!" The man leaned forward and placed one hand,... more...

CHAPTER I. "It is not a question of what we should like to do, Randy; it is a question of what we must do." "I know it, Earl. One thing is certain: the way matters stand we can't pay the quarter's rent for this timber land to-morrow unless we borrow the money, and where we are going for it I haven't the least idea." "Nor I. It's a pity the Jackson Lumber Company... more...

CHAPTER I A BOLT FOR FREEDOM Most of the really important things in life—such as love and death—happen unexpectedly. I know that my escape from Dartmoor did. We had just left the quarries—eighteen of us, all dressed in that depressing costume which King George provides for his less elusive subjects—and we were shambling sullenly back along the gloomy road which leads through the plantation to... more...