Juvenile Fiction Books

I. An evening sky, broken by wandering clouds, which hastening onward toward the north, bear their rich gifts of longed-for rain to the brown meadows, filling the heavens from east to west with graceful lines and swelling bosoms, save, just at the horizon where the sun descended paints a broad, lurid streak of crimson, glowing amid the deepening shadows, a coal in dead, gray ashes. Darker grows the... more...

I   Polly, the Doctor's old white mare, plodded slowly along the snowy country road by the picket fence, and turned in at the snow-capped posts. Ahead, roofed with the ragged ermine of a newly-fallen snow, the Doctor's old-fashioned house loomed gray-white through the snow-fringed branches of the trees, a quaint iron lantern, which was picturesque by day and luminous and cheerful by night,... more...

Preface. The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic’s is a story of public-school life, and was written for the Boy’s Own Paper, in the Fourth Volume of which it appeared. The numbers containing it are now either entirely out of print or difficult to obtain; and many and urgent have been the requests—from boys themselves, as well as from parents, head masters, and others—for its re-issue as a book. Of the... more...

CHAPTER I. RICHARD GRANT AND FRIEND GET INTO AN AWFUL SCRAPE. "Now, steady as she is," said Sandy Brimblecom, who lay upon the half-deck of the Greyhound, endeavoring to peer through the darkness of a cloudy night, which had settled deep and dense upon the Hudson, and obscured every object on the shore. "Steady as she is, Dick, and we shall go in all right." "Ay, ay; steady it... more...

Chapter One. “What insolence!” John Grange’s brown, good-looking face turned of a reddish-brown in the cheeks, the warm tint mounting into his forehead, as he looked straight in the speaker’s eyes, and there was a good, manly English ring in his voice as he said sturdily— “I didn’t know, Mr Ellis, that it was insolent for a man to come in a straightforward way, and say to the father of... more...

CHAPTER I THE PARLOUR BEHIND THE SHOP'I was very solitary indeed.'(Visit to the Cousins).—Mary Lamb.The blinds had been drawn down for some time in the back parlour behind Mr. Fairchild's shop in Pier Street, the principal street in the little town of Seacove. And the gas was lighted, though it was not turned up very high. It was a great thing to have gas; it had not been known at... more...

A Change. “Yes, she must go to school!” repeated Mr Chester. A plaintive sob greeted his words from the neighbourhood of the sofa. For once in her life Mrs Chester’s kindly, good-tempered face had lost its smiles, and was puckered up into lines of distress. She let one fat, be-ringed hand drop to her side and wander restlessly over the satin skirt in search of a pocket. Presently out came a... more...

CHAPTER I. Philip Ogilvie and his pretty wife were quarrelling, as their custom was, in the drawing-room of the great house in Belgrave Square, but the Angel in the nursery upstairs knew nothing at all about that. She was eight years old, and was, at that critical moment when her father and mother were having words which might embitter all their lives, and perhaps sever them for ever, unconsciously and... more...

CHAPTER I "Some one to see you, Mr. Tom." It was Koku, or August, as he was sometimes called, the new giant servant of Tom Swift, who made this announcement to the young inventor. "Who is it, Koku?" inquired Tom, looking up from his work-bench in the machine shop, where he was busy over a part of the motor for his new noiseless airship. "Any one I know? Is it the 'Blessing... more...

THE INVASION His name was Jimsy and he took it for granted that you liked him. That made things difficult from the very start—that and the fact that he arrived in the village two days before Christmas strung to such a holiday pitch of expectation that, if you were a respectable, bewhiskered first citizen like Jimsy's host, you felt the cut-and-dried dignity of a season which unflinching thrift... more...