Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Departure—The Atlantic—Demoralization of the “Boarders”—Betting—The Auctioneer—An Inquisitive Yankee. On board the “Celtic,” Christmas Week, 1889. In the order of things the Teutonic was to have sailed to-day, but the date is the 25th of December, and few people elect to eat their Christmas dinner on the ocean if they can avoid it; so there are only twenty-five saloon... more...

Chapter I. "Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be hell, but I will see what I can do." The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never passed on. I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers while its every yard spelled... more...

n the day the Earth vanished, Herman Raye was earnestly fishing for trout, hip-deep in a mountain stream in upstate New York. Herman was a tall, serious, sensitive, healthy, well-muscled young man with an outsize jaw and a brush of red-brown hair. He wore spectacles to correct a slight hyperopia, and they had heavy black rims because he knew his patients expected it. In his off hours, he was fond of... more...

I PROLOGUE BY WAY OF DEDICATION Those to whom God has given the gift of comely speech, should not hide their light beneath a bushel, but should willingly show it abroad. If a great truth is proclaimed in the ears of men, it brings forth fruit a hundred-fold; but when the sweetness of the telling is praised of many, flowers mingle with the fruit upon the branch. According to the witness of Priscian, it... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I address the reader as living in the land from which the pioneers of France went out to America; first, because I wrote these chapters in that land, a few steps from the Seine; second, because I should otherwise have to assume the familiarity of the reader with much that I have gathered into these chapters, though the reader may have forgotten or never known it; and, third,... more...

FLINGING THE GAUNTLET “Then you insist on ruining me, Mr. Bissell?” Bud Larkin, his hat pushed back on his head, looked unabashed at the scowling heavy features of the man opposite in the long, low room, and awaited a reply. “I don’t want to ruin anybody,” puffed old “Beef” Bissell, whose cattle overran most of the range between the Gray Bull and the Big Horn. “But I allow as how them... more...

Thename of Free Joe strikes humorously upon the ear of memory. It is impossible to say why, for he was the humblest, the simplest, and the most serious of all God's living creatures, sadly lacking in all those elements that suggest the humorous. It is certain, moreover, that in 1850 the sober-minded citizens of the little Georgian village of Hillsborough were not inclined to take a humorous view of... more...

AUTHOR'S PREFACE The economic and social order of the modern world exhibits a strange enigma, which only a prosperous thoughtlessness can regard with indifference or, indeed, without a shudder. We have made such splendid advances in art and science that the unlimited forces of nature have been brought into subjection, and only await our command to perform for us all our disagreeable and onerous... more...

“The laws of this country recognise nothing more sacred than the Forty-shilling Freehold Franchise; and a vote for the county obtained by these means is both constitutional and laudable.”—Lord Chief-Justice Tindal. “What he had heard from hon. members told him nothing more than this, that the working population could easily, under the old system, acquire the right of voting; and that every man... more...

The work of Richard M. Stallman literally speaks for itself. From the documented source code to the published papers to the recorded speeches, few people have expressed as much willingness to lay their thoughts and their work on the line. Such openness-if one can pardon a momentary un-Stallman adjective-is refreshing. After all, we live in a society that treats information, especially personal... more...