Fiction Books

THE CAN WITH THE DIAMOND NOTCH I [Illustration: Festus Clasby] The name stood out in chaste white letters from the black background of the signboard. Indeed the name might be said to spring from the landscape, for this shop jumped from its rural setting with an air of aggression. It was a commercial oasis on a desert of grass. It proclaimed the clash of two civilisations. There were the hills, pitched... more...

AT THE BEGINNING. She was in the box; he was far above in the gallery. He looked down and across and saw her sitting there fair as a flower and robed like a royal courtesan in flame and snow. Like a red torch flamed the ruby in her hair. Her shoulders were framed in her cloak, white as marble warmed with firelight. Her gloved hands held an opera glass which also glowed with flashing light. His face... more...

PROLOGUE And as the sturdy Pilgrim Fathers cut their perilous way through the dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and treeless West were forced to fight the fury of the winds. The graves of them lie mounded here and there in the uncultivated corners of the fields, though more often one wanders across the... more...

THE POWER OF MEDITATION Spiritual meditation is the pathway to Divinity. It is the mystic ladder which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to Truth, from pain to peace. Every saint has climbed it; every sinner must sooner or later come to it, and every weary pilgrim that turns his back upon self and the world, and sets his face resolutely toward the Father's Home, must plant his feet upon its... more...

TADAIMA I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed it to the publisher. "Well?" I inquired, testily. "Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god.... more...

CHAPTER 1 Beside the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes... more...

Chapter I - The Kissing Of Miss Grace Sheraton I admit I kissed her. Perhaps I should not have done so. Perhaps I would not do so again. Had I known what was to come I could not have done so. Nevertheless I did. After all, it was not strange. All things about us conspired to be accessory and incendiary. The air of the Virginia morning was so soft and warm, the honeysuckles along the wall were so... more...

CHAPTER I "We want a new note in English music," said Charmian, in her clear and slightly authoritative voice. "The Hallelujah Chorus era has gone at last to join all the Victorian relics. And the nation is drifting musically. Of course we have a few composers who are being silly in the attempt to be original, and a few others who still believe that all the people can stand in the way of... more...

Lieutenant Laskell surfaced his one-man submarine fifty miles off the Florida coast where he had been patrolling in search of enemy subs. Darkness had fallen. He tuned his short wave set to the Miami station just in time to hear the eight o'clock news. The grim announcement that he had expected was quick to come: "In accordance with the provisions of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, Congress today... more...

CHAPTER I THE TRUST The long clatter of an irregular volley of musketry rattled warningly from the naked mountain ridges; over a great grey shoulder of rock the sun sank in a splendid opal glow; from very near at hand came the clatter of tin cups and the sound of a subdued British laugh. And in the room of the Brigadier-General a man lifted his head from his hands and stared upwards with unseeing,... more...