Fiction Books

Jean de Marselait, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long stone-walled, torchlit room to the file of mail-clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door. A word from him and two of them sprang forward. "You may bring in the prisoner," he said. The two disappeared... more...

hat do I do for a living?" repeated the slim dark-skinned young man in the next seat of the Earth-Moon liner. "I'm a witch doctor," he answered with complete sincerity. "What do you do? I mean, what do they hire you for?" asked Donahue with understandable confusion and a touch of nervousness. "I'm registered as a psychotherapist," said the dark-skinned young man.... more...

On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling... more...

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world,—nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne,... more...

The Four Corners in Middleton made a pleasant drive from the university town of Camberton. Many a time in the history of the house a party of young fellows had driven over the old turnpike that started where the arsenal used to stand in the sacred quarter of Camberton, and as the evening sun gilded the low, fresh-water marshes beyond Spring Pond, would trot on toward the rolling hills of Middleton.... more...

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, law-courts,... more...

~I~ He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a... more...

The Curate Grows Suspicious; and Takes his Stick. “Do what, miss?” said Dally Watlock. “That! There, you did it again.” “La, miss; I on’y thought my face might be a bit smudgy, and I wiped it.” “Don’t tell me a falsehood, Dally. I know what it means. You felt guilty, and your face burned.” “La, miss; I don’t know what you mean.” “Then I’ll tell you, Dally. You are growing... more...

CHAPTER I. WHEREIN THEY KILL THE FATTED CALF TO CELEBRATE THE RETURN OF A FRUGAL SON. On the 18th of May, 1859, M. Renault, formerly professor of physics and chemistry, now a landed proprietor at Fontainebleau, and member of the Municipal Council of that charming little city, himself carried to the post-office the following letter:— "To Monsieur Leon Renault, Civil Engineer, Berlin, Prussia. (To... more...