Fiction Books

CHAPTER I Stanbury Hill, remote but two hours' walk from a region blasted with mine and factory and furnace, shelters with its western slope a fair green valley, a land of meadows and orchard, untouched by poisonous breath. At its foot lies the village of Wanley. The opposite side of the hollow is clad with native wood, skirting for more than a mile the bank of a shallow stream, a tributary of the... more...

The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and birch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste of smouldering leaves.... It wasn’t the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touched the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and had vanished, leaving only the stillness... more...

A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log—only one, he declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption of that four-foot stick.... more...

CHAPTER I. JUDAS The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of that period of the present century which we now call "Empire." Rain had refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte, then declared Consul for... more...

"Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?" "I've been to London, to see the Queen.""Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?" "I caught a little mouse under the chair," Her mother said it three times. And each time the Baby Harriett laughed. The sound of her laugh was so funny that she laughed again at that; she kept on laughing, with shriller and shriller squeals.... more...

CHAPTER IPORTRAITS "As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it."—Whistler. The French Mission in its profound wisdom had sent as liaison officer to the Scottish Division a captain of Dragoons whose name was Beltara. "Are you any relation to the painter, sir?" Aurelle, the interpreter, asked him. "What did you say?" said the dragoon. "Say that... more...

CHAPTER I The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as any road can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mile or so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The mounds and hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. The loose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the winter gales. No road could be built on such... more...

CHAPTER I. In October of the year 1718, the royal counsellor, Nils count Gyllenstierna, was sitting before his desk in his cabinet at Stockholm. Behind him stood Arwed, his son, a tall Swedish youth with blue eyes and golden hair, whose rosy countenance wore a decided expression of courage and resolution. The father suddenly turned his moveable chair so as to face the youth. 'One word is as good... more...

CHAPTER I PIRATE MISSILE Tense, excited men gazed spaceward from the ships and planes of the South Atlantic task force. Other watchers waited breathlessly in the control room of the ship Recoverer. Among these was Tom Swift Jr. "How close to earth is our Jupiter probe missile?" Bud Barclay asked Tom excitedly. The lanky blond youth beside him, in T shirt and slacks, shot a glance at the dials... more...

CHAPTER I It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The lights were out in Robinson's Hall, where there had been dancing and revelry; and the moon, riding high, painted the black windows with silver. The cavalcade, that an hour ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and laughter, were all dispersed. One enamoured swain had ridden east, another west, another north, another south; and the... more...