Short Stories (single author) Books

MY JOB, finished now, had been getting them to Disneyland. The problem was bringing one in particular—one I had to find. The timing was uncomfortably close. I'd taken the last of the yellow pills yesterday, tossing the bottle away with a sort of indifferent frustration. I won or lost on the validity of my logic—and whether I'd built a better mousetrap. The pills had given me 24 hours... more...

OLD MAN SAVARIN. Old Ma'ame Paradis had caught seventeen small doré, four suckers, and eleven channel-catfish before she used up all the worms in her tomato-can. Therefore she was in a cheerful and loquacious humor when I came along and offered her some of my bait. "Merci; non, M'sieu. Dat's 'nuff fishin' for me. I got too old now for fish too much. You like me make you... more...

Every Sabbath morning in the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest... more...

INTRODUCTION HOW WE CAME INTO THE GARDEN It was by a strange irony of Fate that we found ourselves reunited for a summer's outing, in a French garden, in July, 1914. With the exception of the Youngster, we had hardly met since the days of our youth. We were a party of unattached people, six men, two women, your humble servant, and the Youngster, who was an outsider. With the exception of the... more...

CHAPTER I It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. The lights were out in Robinson's Hall, where there had been dancing and revelry; and the moon, riding high, painted the black windows with silver. The cavalcade, that an hour ago had shocked the sedate pines with song and laughter, were all dispersed. One enamoured swain had ridden east, another west, another north, another south; and the... more...

I He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if you will, the time... more...

INTRODUCTION Just without one of the massive bastioned gates of the city of Fathpur-Sikri there stood in the year 1580 a caravanserai that afforded accommodation for man and beast. Here would alight travellers drawn by the calls of homage, by business, or by curiosity to the famous Town of Victory, built, as the inscription over the gateway told, by "His Majesty, King of Kings, Heaven of the Court,... more...

Clamped to the contour couch, the young girl strained against the padded steel grips and screamed. Again she writhed and screamed as she felt the hideous touch of the monster snatching at her. She struggled frenziedly through the muck of the swamp but the thing with the blood eyes scrabbled faster on its rotten limbs. The thing seized her in its obscene embrace. Raw terror tore another scream from her... more...

THE END OF PHÆACIA I.  INTRODUCTORY. The Rev. Thomas Gowles, well known in Colonial circles where the Truth is valued, as “the Boanerges of the Pacific,” departed this life at Hackney Wick, on the 6th of March, 1885.  The Laodiceans in our midst have ventured to affirm that the world at large has been a more restful place since Mr. Gowles was taken from his corner of the vineyard.  The... more...

Jack Barrington, nominal owner of Tinandra Downs cattle station on the Gilbert River in the far north of North Queensland, was riding slowly over his run, when, as the fierce rays of a blazing sun, set in a sky of brass, smote upon his head and shoulders and his labouring stock-horse plodded wearily homewards over the spongy, sandy soil, the lines of Barcroft Boake came to his mind, and, after he had... more...