Fiction Books

CHAPTER I VICKY VAN Victoria Van Allen was the name she signed to her letters and to her cheques, but Vicky Van, as her friends called her, was signed all over her captivating personality, from the top of her dainty, tossing head to the tips of her dainty, dancing feet. I liked her from the first, and if her "small and earlies" were said to be so called because they were timed by the small and... more...

There was nothing peculiar about that certain night I suppose—except to me personally. A little earlier in the evening I'd walked out on the Doll, Margie Hayman—and a man doesn't do that and cheer over it. Not if he's in love with the Doll he doesn't—not this doll. If you've ever seen her you'll give the nod on that. The trouble had been Air Force's new... more...

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agra to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly complete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, all the comforts and none of... more...

n their ship just beyond the orbit of Mars the two aliens sat looking at each other. "No," Riuku said. "I haven't had any luck. And I can tell you right now that I'm not going to have any, and no one else is going to have any either. The Earthmen are too well shielded." "You contacted the factory?" Nagor asked. "Easily. It's the right one. The parking lot... more...

PART I Lays of fair dames of lofty birth,  And golden hair alt richly curled;Of knights that venture life for love,  Suit poets of the older world.We wilt not fill our simple rhymes,  With diamond flash, or gleaming pearl;In singing of the by-gone times;We simply sing the love and faith,Outliving absence, strong as death,Of one Jow-born Canadian girl. 'Twas long ago the rapid spring  Had... more...

CHAPTER I. RACHEL FROST. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun, drawing towards the horizon, fell on a fair scene of country life; flickering through the young foliage of the oak and lime trees, touching the budding hedges, resting on the growing grass, all so lovely in their early green, and lighting up with flashes of yellow fire the windows of the fine mansion, that, rising on a gentle eminence,... more...

I MANTUA DIVES AVIS Among biographical commonplaces one frequently finds the generalization that it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite for a true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared in lonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of human nature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, Publius Vergilius Maro, the... more...

THE VERNER RAVEN The Raven he flies in the evening tide,   He in day dares not intrude;Whoever is born to have evil luck   In vain may seek for good. Lustily flies the Verner Raven,   High o’er the wall he’s flown,For he was aware that Irmindlin fair   Sate in her bower alone. He southward flew, and he northward flew,   He flew high up in the cloud;And he beheld May Irmindlin   Who... more...

THE VICAR'S FAMILY.With that regal indolent air she hadSo confident of her charm.Owen Meredith.Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.Shakespeare. Amongst the divers domestic complications into which short-sighted man is prone to fall there is none which has been more conclusively proved to be an utter and egregious failure than that family arrangement which, for lack of a better name, I will... more...

When the doctor had gone, and the two women from the village he had been waiting for were upstairs shut in with her dead father, Lucy went out into the garden and stood leaning on the gate staring at the sea. Her father had died at nine o'clock that morning, and it was now twelve. The sun beat on her bare head; and the burnt-up grass along the top of the cliff, and the dusty road that passed the... more...