Fiction Books

BY PROXY It will be recalled without effort—possibly, indeed, without interest—that the obsequies of the old Senator Boligand were a distinguished success: a fashionable, proper function, ordered by the young widow with exquisite taste, as all the world said, and conducted without reproach, as the undertaker and the clergy very heartily agreed. At the Church of the Lifted Cross, the incident of the... more...

PAUL BOURGET Born in Amiens, September 2, 1852, Paul Bourget was a pupil at the Lycee Louis le Grand, and then followed a course at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, intending to devote himself to Greek philology. He, however, soon gave up linguistics for poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. When yet a very young man, he became a contributor to various journals and reviews, among others to the... more...

PROLOGUE The Affair of the Man Who Vanished Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent at Scotland Yard, flung aside the paper he was reading and wheeled round in his revolving desk-chair, all alert on the instant, like a terrier that scents a rat. He knew well what the coming of the footsteps toward his private office portended; his messenger was returning at last. Good! Now he would get at the facts of the... more...

Next day Annele seemed quite satisfied again with Franzl—she was such a capital servant, and Annele said: "I have not yet given you any thing, Franzl; do you prefer a gown or money?" "I should like money best." "There are two crown dollars for you." Lenz was very much pleased when Franzl told him this—she is a spoiled, hasty, dear, good child, thought he—and Franzl's... more...

CHAPTER I RAW MATERIAL Summer, intolerable summer, was upon the city at last. The families of its richest citizens had fled. Even at that early day some braved the long railroad journey to the Atlantic coast. Amongst these were our friends the Cluymes, who come not strongly into this history. Some went to the Virginia Springs. But many, like the Brinsmades and the Russells, the Tiptons and the... more...

CHAPTER I A CACTUS-PLANT     For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,    And hope and fear,…    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.             BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert." Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and feet, which seemed to have been meant... 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...

CHAPTER IREADY FOR BUSINESS When the “Big Boss” at Secret Service Headquarters in Washington sent Jack Ralston and his pal, Gabe Perkiser, to Florida with orders to comb the entire Gulf Coast from the Ten Thousand Islands as far north as Pensacola and break up the defiant league of smugglers, great and small, that had for so long been playing a game of hide-and-seek with the Coast Guard revenue... more...

THEY ARRIVE, AND SO DOES THE PRESIDENT "Nu, what's the matter now?" Morris Perlmutter asked, as he entered the office one morning after the cessation of hostilities on the western front. "Ai, tzuris!" Abe moaned in reply, and for at least a minute he continued to rock to and fro in his chair and to make incoherent noises through his nostrils in the manner of a person suffering... more...

CHAPTER I "The Sea Queen" Pember Street, E., is never very cheerful in appearance, not even in mid-spring, when the dingy lilacs in the forecourts of those grimy houses bourgeon and blossom. The shrubs assimilate soon the general air of depression common to the neighbourhood. The smoke catches and turns them; they wilt or wither; and the bunches of flowers are sicklied over with the smuts and... more...