Fiction Books

Ice! The Everest, newly launched, the biggest and fastest boat in the Trans-Atlantic services, was on her maiden voyage to New York. The fortunes of that voyage concern our story simply from the fact that it brought our two adventurers together and helped to show the manly stuff of which they were made. Thereafter the sea was not for them, but the far-off swamps and forests of the mighty Amazon Valley,... more...

CHAPTER ONE I Remember, I Remember "Boo, hoo! Ow, ow; Oh! oh! Me'll die. Boo, hoo. The pain, the pain!Boo, hoo!" "Come, come, now. Daddy's little mate isn't going to turn Turk like that, is she? I'll put some fat out of the dinner-bag on it, and tie it up in my hanky. Don't cry any more now. Hush, you must not cry! You'll make old Dart buck if you kick up a row... more...

I THE PRINTERY That windy autumn noon the young girls of the hat factory darted out of the loft building and came running back with cans of coffee, and bags of candy, and packages of sandwiches and cakes. They frisked hilariously before the wind, with flying hair and sparkling eyes, and crowded into the narrow entrance with the grimy pressmen of the eighth floor. Over and over again the one frail... more...

BLACK MAGIC I had just finished breakfast, and deeply perplexed had risen from the table in order to get a box of matches to light a cigarette, when my black cat got between my feet and tripped me up. I fell forwards, making a clutch at the table-cloth. My forehead struck the corner of the fender and the last thing I remembered was a crash of falling crockery. Then all became darkness. My parlour-maid... more...

Bob Martin stood outside the large red brick house and whistled. He whistled three notes, a long and two short, which meant to Hal Gregg inside that Bob wanted to see him, and to see him quickly. Something was up. At least, that was what it should have meant to Hal, but evidently it didn’t, because no answering whistle came out to Bob, and no head appeared in any of the windows. Bob whistled... more...

CHAPTER I GOOD-BY, BRIGHTON "Wanted: young men to enlist in Uncle Sam's submarine fleet for service in European waters." The magic words stood out in bold type from the newspaper that Jack Hammond held spread out over his knees. Underneath the caption ran a detailed statement setting forth the desire of the United States Government to recruit at once a great force of young Americans to man... more...

CHAPTER I Peter Brent sat nervously smoking in the library of his great house, Brent Rock. He was a man of about forty-five or -six—a typical, shrewd business man. Something, however, was evidently on his mind, for, though he tried to conceal it, he lacked the self-assurance that was habitually his before the world. A scowl clouded his face as the door of the library was flung open and he heard... more...

“‘St. Ronan's Well’ is not so much my favourite as certain of its predecessors,” Lady Louisa Stuart wrote to Scott on March 26, 1824. “Yet still I see the author's hand in it, et c'est tout dire. Meg Dods, the meeting” (vol. i. chap. ix.), “and the last scene between Clara and her brother, are marked with the true stamp, not to be matched or mistaken. Is the Siege of... more...

CHAPTER I HERO WORSHIP "Oh, Mollie, please be careful!" The big car skidded perilously around a sharp curve and chug-chugged merrily down the road. "Goodness, I've been careful so long I'm afraid it will grow on me," Mollie Billette, sometimes known as "Billy," retorted, a determined set to her pretty chin. "Someway, I've got to get it out of my system."... more...

INTRODUCTORY POEM"The stories that the fairies told I learnt in English lanes of old, Where honeysuckle, wreathing high, Twined with the wild rose towards the sky, Or where pink-tinged anemones Grew thousand starred beneath the trees. I saw them, too, in London town, But sly and cautious, glancing down, Where in the grass the crocus grow And ladies ride in Rotten Row, St James's... more...