Fiction Books

I THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN There came a time in the law of lifeWhen over the nursing sodThe shadows broke, and the soul awokeIn a strange, dim dream of God.--LANGDON SMITH. It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall, coarse weeds... more...

A REMEMBERED DREAM This is the story of a dream that came to me some five-and-twenty years ago. It is as vivid in memory as anything that I have ever seen in the outward world, as distinct as any experience through which I have ever passed. Not all dreams are thus remembered. But some are. In the records of the mind, where the inner chronicle of life is written, they are intensely clear and veridical.... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WEST SEA SAILING. Long after King Estein had joined his fathers on the little holm beyond Hernersfiord, and Helgi, Earl of Askland, had become but a warlike memory, the skalds of Sogn still sang this tale of Vandrad the Viking. It contained much wonderful magic, and some astonishingly hard strokes, as they told it; but reading between their lines, the magic bears a strong resemblance to... more...

CHAPTER I A FLAT DUTCH TURNIP BEGINS ITS CAREER My name is Jacobus Teunis Vandemark. I usually sign J.T. Vandemark; and up to a few years ago I thought as much as could be that my first name was Jacob; but my granddaughter Gertrude, who is strong on family histories, looked up my baptismal record in an old Dutch Reformed church in Ulster County, New York, came home and began teasing me to change to... more...

CHAPTER I In the summer of 1850 a topsail schooner slipped into the cove under Trinidad Head and dropped anchor at the edge of the kelp-fields. Fifteen minutes later her small-boat deposited on the beach a man armed with long squirrel-rifle and an axe, and carrying food and clothing in a brown canvas pack. From the beach he watched the boat return and saw the schooner weigh anchor and stand out to sea... more...

Chapter One It was always a matter of wonder to Vandover that he was able to recall so little of his past life. With the exception of the most recent events he could remember nothing connectedly. What he at first imagined to be the story of his life, on closer inspection turned out to be but a few disconnected incidents that his memory had preserved with the greatest capriciousness, absolutely... more...

HER FIRST APPEARANCE   It was at the end of the first act of the first night of "The Sultana," and every member of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself down to the wardrobe woman's son, who would have had to work if his mother lost her place, was sick with anxiety. There is perhaps only one other place as feverish as it is behind the scenes on the first night of a comic... more...

They lie all around me, countless in their number,Each martyr with his palm.No torture now can rack them: safe they slumber,Hushed in eternal calm!I read the rude inscriptions, written weeping,At night with hurried tears.Yet what a tale they tell! their secret keepingThrough all these thousand years."In Pace." Yes, at peace. By sword, or fire,Or cross, or lictor's rod—Virgin, or matron;... more...

he Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish. Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround... more...

MEMOIR OF GRACE AGUILAR. Grace Aguilar was born at Hackney, June 2nd, 1816. She was the eldest child, and only daughter of Emanuel Aguilar, one of those merchants descended from the Jews of Spain, who, almost within the memory of man, fled from persecution in that country, and sought and found an asylum in England. The delicate frame and feeble health observable in Grace Aguilar throughout her life,... more...