Fiction Books

CHAPTER ONE. IN NAPOLEON'S GROTTO. On a certain August day, in the year 1776, two little girls were strolling hand in hand along the pleasant promenade that leads from the queer little town of Ajaccio out into the open country. The town of Ajaccio is on the western side of the beautiful island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea. Back of it rise the great mountains, white with snowy tops; below... more...

I THE DUB "Smell," P. Sybarite mused aloud.... For an instant he was silent in depression. Then with extraordinary vehemence he continued crescendo: "Stupid-stagnant-sepulchral- sempiternally-sticky-Smell!" He paused for both breath and words—pondered with bended head, knitting his brows forbiddingly. "Supremely squalid, sinisterly sebaceous, sombrely sociable Smell!" he... more...

It seems inexcusable to remind the public that one has written a book. Poppa says I ought not to feel that way about it—that he might just as well be shy about referring to the baking soda that he himself invented—but I do, and it is with every apology that I mention it. I once had such a good time in England that I printed my experiences, and at the very end of the volume it seemed necessary to... more...

No News. None at all. Understand that, please, to begin with. That you will at once, and distinctly, recall Dr. Sharpe—and his wife, I make no doubt. Indeed, it is because the history is a familiar one, some of the unfamiliar incidents of which have come into my possession, that I undertake to tell it. My relation to the Doctor, his wife, and their friend, has been in many respects peculiar. Without... more...

Michael McGrath, Postmaster. Some men and some scenes so fasten themselves into one's memory that the years, with their crowding scenes and men, have no power to displace them. I can never forget "Ould Michael" and the scene of my first knowing him. All day long I rode, driving in front my pack-pony laden with my photograph kit, tent and outfit, following the trail that would end somewhere... more...

GUY DE MAUPASSANT—A STUDY BY POL. NEVEUX "I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility of... more...

CHAPTER 1 GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SOCIETY In mid-1973 Bulgaria was under the complete control of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP—see Glossary) as it had been since the latter days of World War II. As that war came to a close, the Kingdom of Bulgaria was occupied by the Soviet army and was governed by a coalition under the communist-dominated Fatherland Front. By 1947 the monarchy had been... more...

A NOBLEMAN'S NEST I The brilliant, spring day was inclining toward the evening, tiny rose-tinted cloudlets hung high in the heavens, and seemed not to be floating past, but retreating into the very depths of the azure. In front of the open window of a handsome house, in one of the outlying streets of O * * * the capital of a Government, sat two women; one fifty years of age, the other seventy... more...

CHAPTER I "It is a great mistake," said Miss Martin emphatically, "for any sensible woman to show a husband she adores him." "Even her own, Aunt Anna?" said Lady Gore, with a contented smile which Aunt Anna felt to be ignoble. "Of course I meant her own," she said stiffly. "I should hardly have thought, Elinor, that after being married so many years you would have... more...

It began in a Woman's Club in London on a February afternoon—an uncomfortable club, and a miserable afternoon—when Mrs. Wilkins, who had come down from Hampstead to shop and had lunched at her club, took up The Times from the table in the smoking-room, and running her listless eye down the Agony Column saw this: To Those Who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle on... more...