Fiction Books

At fifteen, I became a resident in a country village, more than a hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks, with a few walnut-trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings, and traversed only by... more...

We are doing the English cathedral towns, Aunt Celia and I. Aunt Celia has an intense desire to improve my mind. Papa told her, when we were leaving Cedarhurst, that he wouldn’t for the world have it too much improved, and Aunt Celia remarked that, so far as she could judge, there was no immediate danger; with which exchange of hostilities they parted. We are travelling under the yoke of an [p2] iron... more...

Just about six months before my departure for Spain, I first met the Chevalier des Grieux. Though I rarely quitted my retreat, still the interest I felt in my child's welfare induced me occasionally to undertake short journeys, which, however, I took good care to abridge as much as possible. I was one day returning from Rouen, where I had been, at her request, to attend a cause then pending before... more...

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY HOUSE It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances. The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation, but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the... more...

A DAY WITH MENDELSSOHN.uring the year 1840 I visited Leipzig with letters of introduction from Herr Klingemann of the Hanoverian Legation in London. I was a singer, young, enthusiastic, and eager—as some singers unfortunately are not—to be a musician as well. Klingemann had many friends among the famous German composers, because of his personal charm, and because his simple verses had provided them... more...

  A certain Poet once opined  That life is earnest, life is real;  But some are of a different mind,  And turn to hear the Cap-bells peal.  Oft in this Vale of Smiles I've found  Foolishness makes the world go round.   Ecclesiastes, Solomon,  And lots of those who've passed before us,  Denounced all foolishness and fun,  Not so the gay and blithesome Horace;  And... more...

Chapter I Prince Jan was a fuzzy, woolly puppy with clumsy paws and fat, round body covered with tawny hair. His brown eyes looked with loving good-will at everything and everybody. Jan and his brother, Rollo, had great fun playing together, his long fur making it easy for Rollo to haul him around, while Jan's teeth slipped from his brother's short hair. Though they tumbled about and growled... more...

MY JOB, finished now, had been getting them to Disneyland. The problem was bringing one in particular—one I had to find. The timing was uncomfortably close. I'd taken the last of the yellow pills yesterday, tossing the bottle away with a sort of indifferent frustration. I won or lost on the validity of my logic—and whether I'd built a better mousetrap. The pills had given me 24 hours... more...

CHAPTER I TINKLER AND THE MOONFLOWER Dickie lived at New Cross. At least the address was New Cross, but really the house where he lived was one of a row of horrid little houses built on the slope where once green fields ran down the hill to the river, and the old houses of the Deptford merchants stood stately in their pleasant gardens and fruitful orchards. All those good fields and happy gardens are... more...

CHAPTER I Four cowboys inclined their bodies over the barbed-wire fence which marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick and low-so low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by an upstretched hand-and a silent air blew across thousands of open miles of land... more...