Fiction Books

CHAPTER I MOTHER AND SON A woman, tall, somewhat angular, dark of hair and eye, strong of features—a woman now approaching middle age—sat looking out over the long, tree-clad slopes that ran down from the gallery front of the mansion house to the gate at the distant roadway. She had sat thus for some moments, many moments, her gaze intently fixed, as though waiting for something—something or... more...

CHAPTER I There was unwonted bustle in the usually sleepy and dignified New York offices of the Southern and Transcontinental Railroad Company in lower Broadway. The supercilious, well-groomed clerks who, on ordinary days, are far too preoccupied with their own personal affairs to betray the slightest interest in anything not immediately concerning them, now condescended to bestir themselves and,... more...

Unnamed world, 2559 CE Joste was waiting in front of his desk when two guards brought the just-captured human into his office. He found it hard to look at the man without becoming physically ill, and wondered briefly how the guards could tolerate touching him. Well, that was their job; his was to question the man, and he found himself hoping the foul thing would resist, give him an excuse to use force.... more...

Keep this in mind in teaching apprentices: They are future journeymen—and even masters! October 10, 2119New San Francisco Today, at precisely 9:50 a.m., Kyle became First Imperator of Terra. His coup was so fantastically direct and facile that I am almost tempted to believe that old cliche "the time was right." Well, however badly it can be expressed, I suppose the world was ripe for this... more...

CHAPTER I The first time I met her I was a reporter in the embryonic state and she was a girl in short dresses. It was in a garden, surrounded by high red brick walls which were half hidden by clusters of green vines, and at the base of which nestled earth-beds, radiant with roses and poppies and peonies and bushes of lavender lilacs, all spilling their delicate ambrosia on the mild air of passing May.... more...

So Dorothy's beauty had taken London by storm, even as it had conquered Annapolis! However, 'twas small consolation to me to hear his Grace of Chartersea called a pig and a profligate while better men danced her attendance in Mayfair. Nor, in spite of what his Lordship had said, was I quite easy on the score of the duke. It was in truth no small honour to become a duchess. If Mr. Marmaduke... more...

CHAPTER ONE NEWLYN Away beyond the village stands a white cottage with the sea lapping at low cliffs beneath it. Plum and apple orchards slope upward behind this building, and already, upon the former trees, there trembles a snowy gauze where blossom buds are breaking. Higher yet, dark plowed fields, with hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a great hill even to its windy crest,... more...

I think, therefore I am. That was the first thought I had. Of course not in the same symbols, but with the same meaning. I awakened, or came alive, or came into existence suddenly, at least my mental consciousness did. "Here am I," I thought, "but what am I, why am I, where am I?" I had nothing to work with except pure reason. I was there because I was not somewhere else. I was certain... more...

Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains Colonel Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance. One fine autumn evening, in the year 1754, a country cart jogged eastwards into Market Drayton at the heels of a thick-set, shaggy-fetlocked and broken-winded cob. The low tilt, worn and ill fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding the hats of the two men who sat... more...

THE IRON GATE Read at the Breakfast given in honor of Dr. Holmes's Seventieth Birthday by the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," Boston, December 3, 1879. WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meetingIn days long vanished,—is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting,Dull-eared,... more...