Fiction Books

An Event. Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation,—in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills,—and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, “I should like to live there,”—“I could be very happy in that pretty place.” Transient visions pass before... more...

Kate Lancaster's Plan I had been spending the winter in Boston, and Kate Lancaster and I had been together a great deal, for we are the best of friends. It happened that the morning when this story begins I had waked up feeling sorry, and as if something dreadful were going to happen. There did not seem to be any good reason for it, so I undertook to discourage myself more by thinking that it... more...

dwin Dollard's nervous stubby fingers spilled three precious drops of his fifth Scotch highball, as he veered his head away from the horrors on the telescreen. He was in time to observe Garth enter by the paneled tunnel door. "Two more hours—and the ship will be ready," Garth announced. "The men still know nothing." His thin lips cracked into a forced smile. "I slipped them... more...

CHAPTER I THE EMPTY MAIL GIG I was only a young fellow when these things began to happen among us, but I remember very well the morning when it first came out about the Bewick carrier. He was postman, too, but had got permission to keep a horse and cart so that he might make a good little bit by fetching parcels and orders from town. Town to us meant East Dene, and Bewick, to which Harry went, lay away... more...

The captain had learned to hate. It was his profession—and his personal reason for going on. But even hatred has to be channeled for its maximum use, and no truths exist forever. The battle alarm caught him in the middle of a dream, a dream that took place in a white house in a small town in Ohio, when both he and Alice had been very young and the grown adults he now called his children had really... more...

CHAPTER I Alick Craven, who was something in the Foreign Office, had been living in London, except for an interval of military service during the war, for several years, and had plenty of interesting friends and acquaintances, when one autumn day, in a club, Frances Braybrooke, who knew everybody, sat down beside him and began, as his way was, talking of people. Braybrooke talked well and was an... more...

CHAPTER I THE JOURNAL OF DESIDERIUS At that time I was but ten years old, my brother Lorand sixteen; our dear mother was still young, and father, I well remember, no more than thirty-six. Our grandmother, on my father's side, was also of our party, and at that time was some sixty years of age; she had lovely thick hair, of the pure whiteness of snow. In my childhood I had often thought how dearly... more...

LETTER FROM CHEVALIER BUNSEN. Charlottenberg, near Heidelberg, 10th October, 1857. Dear Sir,—It is now about five months since you expressed to me a wish that I might be induced to imbody, in a few pages, my views on the peculiar interest I attached—as you had been informed by a common friend—to the most popular German novel of the age, Gustav Freytag's Soll und Haben. I confess I was at... more...

ason dinAlt sprawled in soft luxury on the couch, a large frosty stein held limply in one hand. His other hand rested casually on a pillow. The gun behind the pillow was within easy reach of his fingers. In his line of work he never took chances. It was all highly suspicious. Jason didn't know a soul on this planet. Yet the card sent by service tube from the hotel desk had read: Kerk Pyrrus would... more...

Compared with a spaceship in distress, going to hell in a handbasket is roomy and slow! The space freighter Queen Dierdre was a great, squat, pockmarked vessel of the Earth-Mars run and she never gave anyone a bit of trouble. That should have been sufficient warning to Mr. Watkins, her engineer. Watkins was fond of saying that there are two kinds of equipment—the kind that fails bit by bit, and the... more...