Fiction Books

Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians 1:1 Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the assembly of the Thessalonians in God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ: 1:2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 1:3 We are bound to always give thanks to God for you, even as it is appropriate, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of each and every one of you... more...

CHAPTER 1 Mrs Gildea had settled early to her morning's work in what she called the veranda-study of her cottage in Leichardt's Town. It was a primitive cottage of the old style, standing in a garden and built on the cliff—the Emu Point side—overlooking the broad Leichardt River. The veranda, quite twelve feet wide, ran—Australian fashion—along the front of the cottage, except for the... more...

CHAPTER I Along the buffalo paths, from one salt-lick to another, a group of pioneers took a vagrant way through the dense cane-brakes. Never a wheel had then entered the deep forests of this western wilderness; the frontiersman and the packhorse were comrades. Dark, gloomy, with long, level summit-lines, a grim outlier of the mountain range, since known as the Cumberland, stretched from northeast to... more...

CHAPTER I. THE SERMON. Four girls were together in a pleasant cottage room with a large window, over which fluttered some dry sticks, which would in due time bear clematis and Virginia creeper leaves. Three of them were Miss Lee's apprentices, and this room had been built out at the back of the baker's shop for them. The place was the property of the Lee family themselves, and nobody in... more...

FATHER'S WAY.MY father was no pessimist; he loved the things of earth,—Its cheerfulness and sunshine, its music and its mirth.He never sighed or moped around whenever things went wrong,—I warrant me he'd mocked at fate with some defiant song;But, being he warn't much on tune, when times looked sort o' blue,He'd whistle softly to himself this only tune he... more...

I. THE CRIME IN WEST SEDGWICK Though a young detective, I am not entirely an inexperienced one, and I have several fairly successful investigations to my credit on the records of the Central Office. The Chief said to me one day: "Burroughs, if there's a mystery to be unravelled; I'd rather put it in your hands than to trust it to any other man on the force. "Because," he went on,... more...

Chapter I. The scene was not exactly new to me. Moved by the spirit of adventure, or by an access of ennui which overtakes me at times, I had several times visited the gaudy establishment of Mercer, on the fashionable side of Fifth Avenue in the Fifties. In either case I had found disappointment; where the stake is a matter of indifference there can be no excitement; and besides, I had been always in... more...

THE ALARM.   Life, struck sharp on death,  Makes awful lightning.              —MRS. BROWNING. I had just come in from the street. I had a letter in my hand. It was for my fellow-lodger, a young girl who taught in the High School, and whom I had persuaded to share my room because of her pretty face and quiet ways. She was not at home, and I flung the letter down on the table, where... more...

GEORGE BORROW. It is a singular coincidence, perhaps, that during one and the same summer we should be celebrating centenaries of Samuel Pepys and George Borrow.  Pepys died in the early summer of 1703; Borrow was born in July, 1803.  Unlike each other in almost every respect, they are dui palor, as Borrow would say, in one very material point.  The reputation of each of them has risen to such a... more...

CHAPTER I In Which the Reader Is Introduced to a Man of Humanity Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness. For convenience sake,... more...