Fiction Books

King Cole was King before the troubles came,The land was happy while he held the helm,The valley-land from Condicote to Thame,Watered by Thames and green with many an elm.For many a year he governed well his realm,So well-beloved, that, when at last he died,It was bereavement to the countryside. So good, so well-beloved, had he beenIn life, that when he reached the judging-place(There where the scales... more...

INTRODUCTION Upton Sinclair is one of the not too many writers who have consecrated their lives to the agitation for social justice, and who have also enrolled their art in the service of a set purpose. A great and non-temporizing enthusiast, he never flinched from making sacrifices. Now and then he attained great material successes as a writer, but invariably he invested and lost his earnings in... more...

CHAPTER I Five hundred years before the Trojan war, and seventeen hundred and fifteen years before our own era, there was a grand festival at Sardes. King Candaules was going to marry. The people were affected with that sort of pleasurable interest and aimless emotion wherewith any royal event inspires the masses, even though it in no wise concerns them, and transpires in superior spheres of life which... more...

THE CHASTE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH A COMEDY "The Chaste Adventures of Joseph" was first produced at the LiberalClub, New York City, in 1914, with the following cast: Madam Potiphar ……. Louise MurphyAsenath ………….. Marjorie JonesPotiphar …………. Berkeley TobeyJoseph …………… Floyd DellSlave ……………. Maurice Becker A room in Potiphar's house. It is sparingly... more...

I In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building castles in Spain—for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of... more...

I CARROLLTON GARDENS For the scene of this narrative please take into mind a wide quarter-circle of country, such as any of the pretty women we are to know in it might have covered on the map with her half-opened fan. Let its northernmost corner be Vicksburg, the famous, on the Mississippi. Let the easternmost be Mobile, and let the most southerly and by far the most important, that pivotal corner of... more...

CHAPTER I AN ANGLO-JAPANESE MARRIAGE   Shibukaro ka  Shiranedo kaki no  Hatsu-chigiri.   Whether the fruit be bitter  Or whether it be sweet,  The first bite tells. The marriage of Captain the Honourable Geoffrey Barrington and Miss Asako Fujinami was an outstanding event in the season of 1913. It was bizarre, it was picturesque, it was charming, it was socially and politically important,... more...

Chapter 1 O ye who tread the Narrow WayBy Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,Be gentle when 'the heathen' prayTo Buddha at Kamakura! Buddha at Kamakura. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold... more...

CHAPTER I. Eliph' Hewlitt Eliph' Hewlitt, book agent, seated in his weather-beaten top buggy, drove his horse, Irontail, carefully along the rough Iowa hill road that leads from Jefferson to Clarence. The Horse, a rusty gray, tottered in a loose-jointed manner from side to side of the road, half asleep in the sun, and was indolent in every muscle of his body, except his tail, which thrashed... more...

CHAPTER I. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea College and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the... more...