Fiction Books

The printed story of Niagara dates back only three centuries; and during the first three decades of even that period the references to this wonderful handiwork of Nature—which was located in a then unexplored region of a New World, a Continent then inhabited only by warring tribes of superstitious Savages—are few and far between. Three facts relating to this locality—and three only—seem to be... more...

1. FILMER In truth the mastery of flying was the work of thousands of men—this man a suggestion and that an experiment, until at last only one vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work. But the inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decided that of all these thousands, one man, and that a man who never flew, should be chosen as the discoverer, just as it has chosen to honour... more...

CHAPTER I THE BOY FLIERS "It was my mistake, Frank!" "How do you make that out, Andy?" "Simply because I was using the little patent Bird monkey-wrench last in our shop, and should have put it back in the toolbox belonging to the aeroplane. The fact that it isn't here shows that I mislaid it. Give me a bad mark, Frank." "Well, I must say it's a queer stunt for you... more...

CHAPTER ONECATHERINE’S INSPIRATION “Alma Mater, Dexter darling, do re mi–O dear! It’s much harder to write than I supposed. I wonder why! When your heart is full of love, why should it be hard to express it?” Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and wrote painfully, her forehead puckered... more...

Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire... more...

A Bolt from the Blue The atmosphere of the office that morning was a shade less genial than usual. We had all of us fought our way downtown through such a storm of wind, snow, slush, and sleet as is to be found nowhere save in mid-March New York, and our tempers had suffered accordingly. I had found a cab unobtainable, and there was, of course, the inevitable jam on the Elevated, with the trains many... more...

CHAPTER ONE Through the Blue Haze Six months and three days after the Peace of Shanghai was signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring miserably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot's seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The... more...

ONCE upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the clouds, a Queen sat at her palace window, which had an ebony black frame, stitching her husband's shirts. While she was thus engaged and looking out at the snow she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell upon the snow. Now the red looked so well upon the white that she thought to... more...

"THE MOORE HOUSE? ARE YOU SPEAKING OF THE MOORE HOUSE?" For a detective whose talents, had not been recognized at headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been expressed in words. Though I had small reason for expecting great things of myself, I had always cherished the hope that if a big case came my way I should... more...

CHAPTER I Where the trail bent over a knoll, Zeke halted, and put down from his shoulder the hickory cudgel with its dangling valise of black oilcloth—total of baggage with which he was faring forth into the world. Then, he straightened himself, and looked back over the way he had come. There, to the east, the dusk of night still lay somberly, hardly touched by the coming dawn. Through the shadows,... more...