Fiction Books

North of the Strand, east of the National Gallery, a narrow street winds a devious course towards Long Acre. To the casual eye it is no more than a mean and dingy thoroughfare without charm or interest, but for the connoisseur it has its legend. Here Swinburne came upon his famous copy of “The...

The ship swung slowly away from the side of the wharf. Several people on board then said, “Well, we’re off at last!” to several other people who had only been thinking of saying it.

The day was warm, even for June. Part of the way there wasn’t any pavement, and, where there was, it was very rough; so, while he was walking along, Billy had plenty of time to think. He had a great many things to think about, too, for his birthday was coming the very next day, and then he would...

The telephone bell was shrilling insistent summons in his apartment when Gary pushed open the hall door thirty feet away. Even though he took long steps, he hoped the nagging jingle would cease before he could reach the ’phone. But the bell kept ringing, being an automatic telephone, dependent...

While the voluble stranger, who had introduced himself as Harry Sawyer, kept up his innocent flow of language, Deacon Cornhill was speechless. He saw that the speaker was a well-dressed young man, and his professed friendship instantly won his confidence.

An invisible hand seemed to strike the man suddenly, knocking him forward on his face. The canoe staggered, lay over on one side—she had struck bottom. Frantically the man recovered, jerked up the centerboard, threw in the pin. But he was too late; he had lost the game. The bow, with its scrap...

She was alone now. Closing her eyes she saw a little U shaped harbour shielded from the sea. It was as delicate as a pastel, a placque of sapphire set in pearl. In the crystal air the red-roofed houses crowded close to it, the terraced town rose on tip-toe to peer at it. All was glitter and gleam...

We lived on the coast of California, on the Spanish grant my grandfather had purchased from the mission which still stands, deserted and crumbling, in the Santa Brigida Valley. Our house, built long before the Civil War, overlooked the lower end of the valley, from a knoll above the salt marshes...

Two men sat conversing in the railroad station. One was middle-aged, with grizzled hair and mustache, tall and big-limbed, but with no extra flesh on his massive frame. His face was long-jowled and determined looking, and his keen gray eyes were overhung with bushy brows, which were often drawn...

The blazing sun of a Texas afternoon turned air and drab brown earth to gold. Not a breath stirred the huge white stocking that served as a wind-indicator on the airdrome of the McMullen Flight of the Air Service border patrol.