Fiction Books

HENRY GOWER was dead at sixty-one—the end of a lifelong fraud which never had been suspected, and never would be. With the world, with his acquaintances and neighbors, with his wife and son and daughter, he passed as a generous, warm-hearted, good-natured man, ready at all times to do anything to help anybody, incapable of envy or hatred or meanness. In fact, not once in all his days had he ever... more...

CHAPTER I THE FORBIDDEN ROCK A young man and an old one sat in the shade of the willows beside the wide, still river. The glare of a hot August sun failed to penetrate the shelter in which they idled; out upon the slow-gliding river it beat relentlessly, creating a pale, thin vapour that clung close to the shimmering surface and dazzled the eye with an ever-shifting glaze. The air was lifeless, sultry,... more...

CHAPTER I Lost Hollow lies close at the foot of the mountain which gives it its name. The height of neither is great, geographically considered; the peak is perhaps eighteen hundred feet above sea level: The Hollow, a thousand, and from that down to The Forge there is a gradual descent by several trails and one road, a very deplorable one, known as The Appointed Way, but abbreviated into—The Way.... more...

CHAPTER IA LETTER FROM GRANDPA "Ted! Teddy! Look, it's snowing!" "Oh, is it? Let me see, Mother!" Theodore Martin, who was seldom called anything but Teddy or Ted, hurried away from the side of his mother, who was straightening his tie in readiness for school. He ran to the window through which his sister Janet, or Jan as she liked to be called, was looking. "Oh, it really is... more...

Eustace's career—if career it can be called—certainly dates from that afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. I confess at once that I am a plain, simple man, with no pretensions to literary style. Still, I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiassed account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago. Ravello is a... more...

May it please Your Majesty, To permit me to lay at your Feet the following Sheets, published with a View to be useful to those, who hereafter may have the Care of the Health of your Majesty’s Troops. Your Majesty’s particular Inquiries into the State of Your Military Hospitals, in every Quarter of the World, in the Time of the late glorious and successful War; Your Concern for every Officer and... more...

CHAPTER I 'Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?' said Lady Langdale to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the crush-room of the opera house. 'Oh yes! everybody's to be there, I hear,' replied Mrs. Dareville. 'Your ladyship, of course?' 'Why, I don't know—if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a point... more...

FOREWORD Dear Geoffrey Whitworth,—Considering for how many ages how many clever people have been complaining of their publishers, you might have supposed that no device for getting one of them into a scrape could have been left untried. Yet, so far as I can remember, no author has had the bright idea of denouncing his publisher, particularly, and by name, as accessory before the fact. I am willing to... more...

THE WIFE I I RECEIVED the following letter: "DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH! "Not far from you—that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo—very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there, and... more...

It was Madame who first entered the box, and Madame was bright with youthful bloom, bright with jewels, and, moreover, a beauty. She was a little creature, with childishly large eyes, a low, white forehead, reddish-brown hair, and Greek nose and mouth. "Clearly," remarked the old lady in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air of... more...