Fiction Books

A CAMP IN THE SNOW Winter in the upper heights of the Bear Tooth Range is a glittering desolation of snow with a flaming blue sky above. Nothing moves, nothing utters a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble domes, set high in the pathway of the sun by day and thrust amid the stars by night. The firs seem... more...

Kyphotic (hump-backed) soft-shelled turtles have been known for many years in Asia and America. Gressitt (Peking Natural History Bulletin, 2 (pt. 4): 413-415, figs. 1-5, 1937) has reviewed accounts of such turtles, and recorded the anomaly in Amyda sinensis (Wiegmann) and A. steindachneri (Siebenrock) of Asia and in unidentified species in the United States. Records of kyphosis in American species... more...

Three natural physiographic divisions cross Washtenaw County from northwest to southeast. The northwestern part of the county is occupied by the rough interlobate moraine of loose-textured soil, the Interlobate Lake District; a broad Clay Morainic Belt occupies most of the central part of the county; and in the southeastern corner of the county is found a low Lake Plain, once the bed of glacial Lake... more...

CHAPTER I. THE WEDDING OF ST. LUC. On the evening of a Sunday, in the year 1578, a splendid fête was given in the magnificent hotel just built opposite the Louvre, on the other side of the water, by the family of Montmorency, who, allied to the royalty of France, held themselves equal to princes. This fête was to celebrate the wedding of François d'Epinay de St. Luc, a great friend and favorite... more...

CAIUS CAESAR CALIGULA. (251) I. Germanicus, the father of Caius Caesar, and son of Drusus and the younger Antonia, was, after his adoption by Tiberius, his uncle, preferred to the quaestorship [377] five years before he had attained the legal age, and immediately upon the expiration of that office, to the consulship [378]. Having been sent to the army in Germany, he restored order among the legions,... more...

CHAPTER I Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered.  How is the son of a British yeoman, who has been fed principally on salt pork and yeast dumplings, to know that there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradise of glass jars full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and... more...

THE COCK AND THE BEAN. He tried to swallow it, and choked himself. He choked himself and stretched himself out, and there he lay, and couldn't even breathe. A cock was scratching one day in the earth under the wall of a cottage when he found a bean. And his mistress saw him, ran up to him, and asked: “Mr. Cock, what makes you lie there like that, so that you can't breathe?” “I've... more...

Chapter I Ben and His Aunt Five o'clock sounded from the church clock, and straightway the streets of Milltown were filled with men, women, and children issuing from the great brick factories huddled together at one end of the town. Among these, two boys waked in company, James Watson and Ben Bradford. They were very nearly of an age, James having just passed his fifteenth birthday, and Ben having... more...

IT WAS a beautifully machined container, shaped like a two pound chocolate candy box, the color and texture of lead. The cover fitted so accurately that it was difficult to see where it met the lip on the base. Yet when Forster lifted the container from the desk in the security guards' office, he almost hit himself in the face with it, so light was it. He read the words clumsily etched by hand... more...

Chapter One It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them... more...