Fiction Books

SOMENDRIA. Ada-Kalé is a Turkish fortress which seems to spring directly from the bosom of the Danube at a point where three curious and quarrelsome races come into contact, and where the Ottoman thought it necessary to have a foothold even in times of profound peace. To the traveller from Western Europe no spectacle on the way to Constantinople was so impressive as this ancient and picturesque... more...

CHAPTER I. A PRACTICAL JOKE. On a cloudy December morning a gentleman, two ladies, and a boy stepped down from the express train at a station just above the Highlands on the Hudson. A double sleigh, overflowing with luxurious robes, stood near, and a portly coachman with difficulty restrained his spirited horses while the little party arranged themselves for a winter ride. Both the ladies were young,... more...

CHAPTER I Oaths, vociferations, and the slamming of cab-doors. The darkness was decorated by the pink of a silk skirt, the crimson of an opera-cloak vivid in the light of a carriage-lamp, with women's faces, necks, and hair. The women sprang gaily from hansoms and pushed through the swing-doors. It was Lubini's famous restaurant. Within the din was deafening.   "What cheer,... more...

CHAPTER ONE Spencer Chambers frowned at the spacegram on the desk before him. John Moore Mallory. That was the man who had caused so much trouble in the Jovian elections. The troublemaker who had shouted for an investigation of Interplanetary Power. The man who had said that Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging economic war against the people of the Solar System. Chambers smiled. With... more...

I dedicate to you, my dear friend, a work, principally composed under your hospitable roof; and to the materials of which your library, rich in the authorities I most needed, largely contributed. The idea of founding an historical romance on an event so important and so national as the Norman Invasion, I had long entertained, and the chronicles of that time had long been familiar to me. But it is an... more...

CHAPTER I. "I say, Hal, do you realize that the Ready Rangers will have been in existence a whole year on the 30th?" asked Will Rogers, as he and Hal Bacon walked homeward from school one afternoon of the May following the Rangers' memorable trip to New York. "I remember the exact date, because it was Decoration day, and the first time I was out after my accident." "That's... more...

INTRODUCTION. ——- The great pioneer in the United States, in the labors of penal Reform and the prevention of crime,—EDWARD LIVINGSTON,—said as long ago as 1833, in his famous "Introductory Report to the Code of Reform and Prison Discipline": "As prevention in the diseases of the body is less painful, less expensive, and more efficacious than the most skillful cure, so in the moral... more...

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE   ELBERT HUBBARD Elbert Hubbard is dead, or should we say, has gone on his last Little Journey to the Great Beyond. But the children of his fertile brain still live and will continue to live and keep fresh the memory of their illustrious forebear. Fourteen years were consumed in the preparation of the work that ranks today as Elbert Hubbard's masterpiece. In Eighteen... more...

Through the narrow streets leading to the great plaza of Karth, swarmed a colorful crowd—buyers, idlers, herdsmen, artisans, traders. From all directions they came, some to gather around the fountain, some to explore the wineshops, many to examine the wares, or to buy from the merchants whose booths and tents hid the cobblestones. A caravan wound its way through a gate and stopped, the weary beasts... more...

The Mermaid of Druid Lake If Edwin Horton had not had a sleepless time that hot June night it probably would never have happened. As it was, after tossing and pitching on an uncomfortably warm mattress for several hours, he had dressed himself and left his Bolton-avenue home for a stroll in Druid Hill Park just as the dawn made itself evident. That was the beginning of the adventure. Not a soul was in... more...