Fiction Books

"Champ, what's with ya lately?" Benny asked the question as they lay on the beach. "Nothing," Frankie answered. "Just fight-nite miseries, I guess." "No it ain't, Frankie. It's something else. You losin' confidence in Milt? That it? Can't you hold it one more time? You guys only need tonite and you got it. One more to make Ten-Time Defenders—the... more...

The differences in anatomy and color between many species of chipmunks are subtle, and refined techniques are required to discover them. When "measuring" chipmunks taxonomically, it is necessary to use a "chipmunk scale" and not, for example, a "pocket-gopher scale." In explanation, some species of pocket gophers closely allied to each other, and even some subspecies of the same... more...

I Nevis gave of her bounty to none more generously than to John and Mary Fawcett. In 1685 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had sent the Huguenots swarming to America and the West Indies. Faucette was but a boy when the Tropics gave him shelter, and learning was hard to get; except in the matter of carving Caribs. But he acquired the science of medicine somehow, and settled on Nevis, remodelled his... more...

MONSIEUR DE GUISE'S LATIN. On Monday, the 18th of August, 1572, there was a splendid festival at the Louvre. The ordinarily gloomy windows of the ancient royal residence were brilliantly lighted, and the squares and streets adjacent, usually so solitary after Saint Germain l'Auxerrois had struck the hour of nine, were crowded with people, although it was past midnight. The vast, threatening,... more...

IT Prana Beach would be a part of the solid west coast if it wasn't for a half circle of the deadliest, double-damned, orchid-haunted black morass, with a solid wall of insects that bite, rising out of it. But the beach is good dry sand, and the wind keeps the bugs back in the swamp. Between the beach and the swamp is a strip of loam and jungle, where some niggers live and a god. I landed on Prana... more...

The first mention of bats in Nebraska possibly was by Harrison Allen, in his "Monograph of the Bats of North America" (1864:14, 20, 30, 35, 42), who listed Nycticejus crepuscularis [= Nycticeius humeralis], Lasiurus borealis, Scotophilus carolinensis and Scotophilus fuscus [both = Eptesicus fuscus], and Scotophilus noctivagans [= Lasionycteris noctivagans], as collected in... more...

The Offshore Pirate I This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was... more...

CHAPTER I.THE TRAPPER'S ART. During past ages many of the wild creatures of the forest and stream were hunted and captured in various ways by the inhabitants of the wilderness,--the flesh of these animals being the principal food of many tribes of savages and the skins being used for clothing; but it was only after furs became a staple article of wearing apparel among civilized nations and the... more...

So far as my literary work is concerned 'Pierre and His People' may be likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me explain. While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories and sketches of life in Canada which I called 'Pike Pole Sketches on the Madawaska'. A very few of them were published in Australia, and I brought with me to England in 1889 about... more...

CHAPTER I THE TOY BALLOON "I am the last of my kind. This is the very peak of loneliness."—TheMurmuring Pine. There is a State in the North Mississippi Valley unexcelled for its quiet beauty. To the casual traveler there may be a certain monotony in the unending miles of rolling green hills, stretching on and on into distant, pale skies. But the native of the State knows that the monotony is... more...