Those Extraordinary Twinsby Mark TwainA man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time ofit when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He hasno clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has somepeople in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knowsthese people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he canplunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So hegoes to work. To write a novel? Nothat is a thought which comeslater; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale;
The White Mr. Longfellowby William Dean HowellsWe had expected to stay in Boston only until we could find a house in OldCambridge. This was not so simple a matter as it might seem; for theancient town had not yet quickened its scholarly pace to the modern step.Indeed, in the spring of 1866 the impulse of expansion was not yetvisibly felt anywhere; the enormous material growth that followed thecivil war had not yet begun. In Cambridge the houses to be let were few,and such as there were fell either below our pride or rose above ourpurse. I wish I might tell how at last we bought a house; we
LOST FACELOST FACEby Jack London1- Page 2-LOST FACELOST FACEIt was the end. Subienkow had travelled a long trail of bitterness andhorror, homing like a dove for the capitals of Europe, and here, fartheraway than ever, in Russian America, the trail ceased. He sat in the snow,arms tied behind him, waiting the torture. He stared curiously before him...
This novel is dedicated to Stan, Christopher, Michele and Howard; to Rosario and Patrice; to Pamela and Elaine; and to Niccolo. This novel is dedicated by Vittorio to the people of Florence, Italy. 1 WHO I AM, WHY I WRITE, WHAT IS TO E WHEN I was a small boy I had a terrible dream. I dreamt I held in my arms the severed heads of my younger brother I and sister. They were quick still, and mute, with big fluttering eyes, and reddened cheeks, and so horrified was I that I could make no more of a sound than they could. The dream came true. But no one will weep for me or for them. They have be
The solitary figure in the saffron robes shielded his eyes from the glare and squinted down the glacier to where the enormous black vessel lay, one-third submerged, in the floor of the valley. Allowing for the portion lost below the icy surface of the frozen lake it was easily some three hundred cubits long, at least fifty wide and another thirty high. It had, overall, the appearance of some fantastic barge with a kind of gabled house mounted upon its deck. Its gopher wood timbers were blackened by a heavy coating of pitch and hardened by the petrification of the glacier which had kept it vi
Chapter one He had been walking the dirty streets since twilight first began to gather. The pain streamed like liquid fire through every cell of his body - but he locked it away in a corner of his mind, ignored it, and walked. There was little to please the eye in his surroundings, and he paid scant attention to them. He was on a small poor unimportant planet whose very name, Coranex, meant nothing to him. But around the spaceport clustered a drab, seedy town, which was a well-known stopover on the main space lanes. It attracted freightermen, traders, wandering technicians, space drifters o
The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling - a post of greed and fear and nervous tension - bees unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it. James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes. He shifted himself unobtrusively away from the roulette he had been playing and went to stand for a moment at the brass rail which surrounde
Up at the unpeopled borderland of cloudy heaven, where unending wind drove eternal snow between and over high gray rocks, the gods and goddesses were gathering. In the grayness just before dawn, their tall forms came like smoke out of the gray and smoking wind, to take on solidity and detail. Unperturbed by wind or weather, their garments flapping in the shrieking howl of air, they stood upon the rooftop of the world and waited as their numbers grew. Steadily more powers streaked across the sky, bringing reinforcement. The shortest of the standing figures was taller than humanity, but from t
In what felt to him like the first cold morning of the world, he groped for fire. It was a high place where he searched, a lifeless, wind-scoured place, a rough, forbidding shelf of black and splintered rock. Snow, driven by squalls of frigid air, streamed across the black rock in white powder, making shifting veils of white over layers of gray ancient ice that was almost as hard as the rock itself. Dawn was in the sky, but still hundreds of kilometers away, as distant as the tiny sawteeth of the horizon to the northwest. The snowfields and icefields along that far edge of the world were
Neither do they expect trouble with a cargo that is sewn up tight. Only a privileged few knew exactly when the Kruxator Collection would arrive in the country. That it was due to e to Britain was mon knowledge, and you had only to read a newspaper to discover that March 15th was the day on which the fabled group of paintings and jewellery were to go on display - for two weeks - at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Kruxator Collection is called after its founder, the late Niko Kruxator, whose fabulous wealth arose from sources unknown, for he had arrived penniless in the United States at a
"Now thou art e unto a feast of death." William Shakespeare Henry VI, Part I, Act 4, Scene 5. PART ONE January 1812 CHAPTER 1 A pale horse seen a mile away at sunrise means the night is over. Sentries can relax, battalions stand down, because the moment for a surprise dawn attack has passed. But not on this day. A grey horse would hardly have been visible at a hundred paces, let alone a mile, and the dawn was shredded with dirty cannon smoke that melded with the snow-clouds. Only one living thing moved in the grey space between the British and French lines; a small, dark bird that hopp
Doyne Farmer and Alletta Belin, 1992 There are many people, including myself, who are quite queasy about the consequences of this technology for the future. K. Eric Drexler, 1992 Introduction Artificial Evolution in the Twenty-first Century The notion that the world around us is continuously evolving is a platitude; we rarely grasp its full implications. We do not ordinarily think, for example, of an epidemic disease changing its character as the epidemic spreads. Nor do we think of evolution in plants and animals as occurring in a matter of days or weeks, though it does. And we do not or
Cyrano de BergeracA Play in Five Actsby Edmond RostandTranslated from the French by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. GuillemardThe CharactersCYRANO DE BERGERACCHRISTIAN DE NEUVILLETTECOUNT DE GUICHERAGUENEAULE BRETCARBON DE CASTEL-JALOUXTHE CADETSLIGNIEREDE VALVERTA MARQUISSECOND MARQUISTHIRD MARQUISMONTFLEURYBELLEROSEJODELETCUIGYBRISSAILLETHE DOORKEEPERA LACKEYA SECOND LACKEYA BOREA MUSKETEERANOTHERA SPANISH OFFICERA PORTERA BURGHERHIS SONA PICKPOCKETA SPECTATORA GUARDSMANBERTRAND THE FIFERA MONKTWO MUSICIANS...
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSENTHE PRINCESS AND THE PEAby Hans Christian AndersenONCE upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry aprincess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled allover the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted.There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whetherthey were real ones. There was always something about them that wasnot as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he wouldhave liked very much to have a real princess....
PROPHETS AND KINGSby ELLEN G.WHITEProphets and Kings(9)FOREWORDTHE STORY Of PROPHETS AND KINGS IS THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF FIVE OUTSTANDING VOLUMES SPANNING SACRED HISTORY. IT WAS, HOWEVER, THE LAST BOOK OF THE SERIES TO BE WRITTEN, AND THE LAST OF MANY RICH WORKS TO COME FROM THE GIFTED PEN OF ELLEN G. WHITE. THROUGH HER SEVENTY YEARS OF SPEAKING AND WRITING IN AMERICA AND ABROAD, MRS. WHITE EVER KEPT BEFORE THE PUBLIC THE LARGER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EVENTS OF HISTORY, REVEALING THAT IN THE AFFAIRS OF MEN ARE TO BE DETECTED THE UNSEEN INFLUENCES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS AND EVILTHE HAND OF GOD AND T