Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. "Come, you fellows, that's enough joking. This defection of yours, melancholy Eynhardt, combines obstinacy with wisdom, like Balaam's ass! Well! may you rest in peace. And now let us be off." The glasses, filled with clear Affenthaler, rang merrily together, the smiling landlord took up his money, and the company rose noisily from the wooden bench, overturning it with a... more...

CHAPTER I. "EMILY DID IT." Among my earliest recollections these three words have a place, coming to my ears as the presages of a reprimand. I had made a frantic effort to lift my baby-brother from his cradle, and had succeeded only in upsetting baby, pillows and all, waking my mother from her little nap, while brother Hal stood by and shouted, "Emily did it." I was only five years of... more...

And remembering, we shall always seek to justify the self-sacrifice made by those companions who trained with us and fought with us but whom by virtue of their supreme service, we returned without. They died, but being dead, live on, and their spirits beckon us to strive toward that for which they died. The flag was their shrine—the fields of France their tomb—and they shall ever be wreathed with... more...

INTRODUCTION When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a short essay on "The Three Brontës" I agreed with some misgiving. Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with another Brontë book, seems not only a dangerous,... more...

CHAPTER I THE MINISTER'S SON "I wish we were not so terribly poor, Grant," said Mrs. Thornton, in a discouraged tone. "Is there anything new that makes you say so, mother?" answered the boy of fifteen, whom she addressed. "Nothing new, only the same old trouble. Here is a note from Mr.Tudor, the storekeeper." "Let me see it, mother." Grant took a yellow envelope... more...

CHAPTER I THE HALL BY UNION STREET The orator was not eloquent; but he had told a human story and all listened with respect. When he paused and looked upward it seemed to many that a light of justice shone upon his haggard face while the tears rolled unwiped down his ragged jerkin. His lank, unkempt hair, caught by the draught from the open doors at the far end of the hall, streamed behind him in... more...

PROLOGUE     Thursday 8:40 a.m.   G-load is now eight point five. Pilot must acknowledge for power-up sequence to continue. The cockpit computer was speaking in a simulated female voice, Russian with the Moscow accent heard on the evening TV newscast Vremya. The Soviet technicians all called her Petra, after that program's famous co-anchor. Yuri Andreevich Androv didn't need to be told the... more...

Here the dark cave, along which Nat Starrett had been creeping, broadened into what his powerful searchlight revealed to be a low, wide, smoothly circular room. At his feet lapped black, thick-looking waves of an underground lake, a pool of viscous substance that gave off a penetrating, poignant odor of acid, sweetish and intoxicating, unlike any acid he knew. The smell rolled up in a sickening, sultry... more...

CHAPTER I. "Who amongst this merry party will become sufficiently sober to assist me in a work of charity?" was Mrs. Hamilton's address, one afternoon, as she entered her daughter's room, where Emmeline, her young friends Lady Florence and Lady Emily Lyle, and even the usually quiet Ellen, were employing themselves in drawing, embroidery, and such light amusements as diligently as the... more...

THE PENALTY I The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long.... more...