Action & Adventure Books

CHAPTER I Vices and virtuesThe sons of mortals bearIn their breasts mingled;No one is so good That no failing attends him,Nor so bad as to be good for nothing.         Ha'vama'l (High Song of Odin). It was back in the tenth century, when the mighty fair-haired warriors of Norway and Sweden and Denmark, whom the people of Southern Europe called the Northmen, were becoming known and... more...

CHAPTER I The Good Grey Nerve His name was Sanford Hantee, but you will hear that only occasionally, for the boys of the back streets called him Skag, which "got" him somewhere at once. That was in Chicago. He was eleven years old, when he wandered quite alone to Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him. A silent madness. It flooded over him like a river. If any one had noticed, it would have... more...

The Catastrophe. Doctor Julian Humphreys was spoken of by those who believed that they knew him best as an eccentric; because, being a physician and surgeon of quite unusual ability, he chose—possessing a small independence amounting to a bare three hundred pounds per annum—to establish himself in the East-End of London, and there devote himself with zeal and enthusiasm to the amelioration of the... more...

All the way there David had saved this moment for himself, struggling not to peek until the proper time came. When the car finally stopped, the rest of them got out stiffly and went into the new house. But David walked slowly into the back yard with his eyes fixed on the ground. For a whole minute he stood there, not daring to look up. Then he took a deep breath, clenched his hands tightly, and lifted... more...

Chapter One. My Boy Audience. My name is Philip Forster, and I am now an old man. I reside in a quiet little village, that stands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of a very large bay—one of the largest in our island. I have styled it a quiet village, and so it really is, though it boasts of being a seaport. There is a little pier or jetty of chiselled granite, alongside which you may usually observe... more...

CHAPTER I TRUXTON KING He was a tall, rawboned, rangy young fellow with a face so tanned by wind and sun you had the impression that his skin would feel like leather if you could affect the impertinence to test it by the sense of touch. Not that you would like to encourage this bit of impudence after a look into his devil-may-care eyes; but you might easily imagine something much stronger than brown... more...

TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the school-house was hardly... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCING MR. PETER RUFF There was nothing about the supper party on that particular Sunday evening in November at Daisy Villa, Green Street, Streatham, which seemed to indicate in any way that one of the most interesting careers connected with the world history of crime was to owe its very existence to the disaster which befell that little gathering. The villa was the residence and... more...

CHAPTER I I am Geoffrey Benteen, Gentleman Adventurer, with much experience upon the border, where I have passed my life. My father was that Robert Benteen, merchant in furs, the first of the English race to make permanent settlement in New Orleans. Here he established a highly profitable trade with the Indians, his bateaux voyaging as far northward as the falls of the Ohio, while his influence among... more...

'If Diamonds Could Talk' is the sequel to 'His 16th Face' by Stephanie Van Orman. Beth Coldwell has been kidnapped more times than the average person, but now she has been kidnapped by immortals who believe she is immortal too. They have separated her from her darling Christian and trapped her in a castle built inside Tombstone Mountain, where they have given her a task. She is to... more...