Ranny Ransome is an idealistic young man, devoted to exuberant gymnastic exercises and to fighting “flabbiness” in his own life, body and soul. He loves the girlish and athletic Winny Dymond, and particularly loves participating with her in the Combined Maze, a choreographed, intricate, exhilarating group gymnastic ritual in which the young men and women of the Polytechnic Gymnasium demonstrate their skills. Unfortunately, Ranny falls under the spell of the seductive Violet, a sexual free spirit who wants nothing more than to live an untrammelled life on her own terms...

“To bury these, to christen those, And marry such fond folks who chose To change the tenor of their life And risk the matrimonial strife.” This was the humdrum life of Dr. Syntax before he set out on his bizarre and hilarious adventures, presented here in the form of satirical poem in 26 cantos. It’s a lot of fun!

How differently people view life, society, and religion, depending on their perspective! Perry, the often sick young man that is learning to follow his Master; Eunice (Una), as close as a sister to Perry but not a Christian; Eleanor, the selfish socialite; and Tom, Eleanor's earnestly Christian brother, form the core of this story of life, love, marriage, and service.

"More Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain" fills in the gaps left by the first collection of newspaper articles: "Newspaper Articles by Mark Twain" . The missing articles, collected by twainquotes.com, consist of works printed in the Muscatine Journal, the Keokuk Daily Post, the New York Sunday Mercury, the Golden Era, the Californian, The Daily Dramatic Chronicle, San Francisco Bulletin, the New York Herald and travel letters originally printed in the Chicago Daily tribune. The earliest articles first appeared in 1853...

The tales of King Arthur and his Knights are of Celtic origin. The Celts were the people who occupied Britain at the time when the history of the country opens, and a few words are necessary to explain why the characters in the stories act and speak as though they belonged to a later age. These stories are adapted from the Book of Romance by ANDREW LANG. It is believed that King Arthur lived in the sixth century, just after the Romans withdrew from Britain, and when the Britons, left to defend themselves against the attacks of the marauding Saxons, rose and defeated them at Mount Badon, securing to themselves peace for many years...

Volume 2 of a ten volume collection of amusing tales, observations and anecdotes by America's greatest wordsmiths. This work includes selections by such household favorites as Ambrose Bierce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain and Bret Harte.

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (1893) is a science fiction novel by English writer George Griffith. It was his first published novel and remains his most famous work. It was first published in Pearson's Weekly and was prompted by the success of The Great War of 1892 in Black and White magazine, which was itself inspired by The Battle of Dorking. A lurid mix of Jules Verne's futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian visions of News from Nowhere and the future war invasion literature of Chesney and his imitators, it tells the tale of a group of terrorists who conquer the world through airship warfare...

This book consists of fifty-two very short fictitious stories about cats and kittens, which have been written for children. Many of the stories have been written by cats and address the queen, many of them are commentaries on well known nursery rhymes, and many of them are both.

"Backwater" is the second volume of "Pilgrimage," a series of thirteen autobiographical novels by Dorothy Richardson considered to have pioneered the "stream of consciousness" technique of writing. In a review of the first volume in the series, "Pointed Roofs" (The Egoist April 1918), May Sinclair first applied the term "stream of consciousness" in her discussion of Richardson's stylistic innovations. Richardson, however, preferred the term "interior monologue." Miriam Henderson, the central character in Pilgrimage, is based on the author's own life between 1891 and 1915...

Today the world is awash with “celebrities” whose only accomplishment is being celebrated by the media in all its various forms. Henry James, of course, long pre-dates the multiplicity of media in today’s world, when the press was the main source of adulation, and he was famously averse to giving newspaper interviews himself. For those interested in the sources of celebrity worship, however, his story, “The Papers,” showing how two aspiring London journalists worked with those who were famous simply for being famous, helps to give some idea of how such worship was practiced a century ago. (Nicholas Clifford)

Time is the strangest of all mysteries. Relatively unimportant events, almost unnoticed as they occur, may, in hundreds of years, result in Ultimate Catastrophe. On Time Track Number One, that was the immutable result. But on Time Track Number Two there was one little event that could be used to avert it—the presence of a naked woman in public. So, Skandos One removed the clothing from the Lady Rhoann and after one look, Lord Tedric did the rest!

Arcadia is a prose work by Sir Philip Sidney, a classic of the Renaissance pastoral and a work of high romance, a fleeting vision of a lost world of gallantry and adventure, representing an escape from the realities of politics in the Elizabethan court. It contributes to the ongoing legend of Sidney as the perfect Renaissance man, "soldier, scholar, horseman he/And all he did done perfectly".

The basis on which these myths were selected necessarily excluded those which showed traces of the white man's religion or of the red man's coarseness. Relatively speaking, only a few myths could be selected. These were the creation myths, the origin of the races, the theft of fire, the salmon, and especially those connected with the physical features of the country, such as those of Takhoma, Shasta, the Columbia River, and the group of mountains of the bridge of the gods…. No claim is made...

This is a whimsical, entertaining, tongue in cheek narrative of the author’s purchase of a house, circa 1911.

Twenty-four delightful tales for children. Meet Timothy Mouse, Little Red Doe, Dame Woodchuck, King Moose and Unk-Wunk the Porcupine with their friends. Adventure and humor are skillfully wrapped around these lovable characters.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States, publishing her stories under the pseudonym Francis Stevens. Bennett wrote a number of highly acclaimed fantasies between 1917 and 1923 and has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy". Citadel of Fear is considered Francis Stevens' masterpiece, by Lovecraft's acclaim. Two adventurers discover a lost city in the Mexican jungle. One is taken over by an evil god while the other falls in love with a woman from the ancient Mexican city of Tlapallan...

An early werewolf novel, praised by H.P Lovecraft. The only weird fiction from an author of mainly crime fiction. Two strange disappearances occur on a road in Sussex. The second involved a member of the aristocracy and a famous actress, so a large, but fruitless investigation is held by Scotland Yard. An American, visiting an old friend, who is of the local gentry, suspects something horrible and begins to investigate to verify his fears..

I am inclined to rank Count Tolstoy not among the realists or naturalists, but rather as an impressionist. He is often careless about accuracy. Numberless incongruities can be pointed out. He is as willing to adopt an anachronism as a medieval painter. I would defy an historian to reconstruct the battle of Austerlitz from Count Tolstoy's description. And yet what a picture of a battle was ever more vivid! It is like a painting where the general impression is true, but a close analysis discovers...

The best of science fantasy meets the best of science fiction as Tedric battles his way through two universes of adventure: In one universe...Tedric the Ironmaster wields the mightiest sword his world has ever seen - and swears to break the power of the evil god Sarpedion, or die in the attempt. This is the second in a series and takes place when Tedric, now a Lord, begins learning how to plan and observe instead of just rushing in to kill. In another universe...only Tedric's strength and daring stand between the dwindling power of the Terran Empire and total alien conquest...

The Dark is a novella about a desperate young man, a “terrorist and nihilist”, trying to avoid arrest by taking refuge in a brothel. The story focuses on his unfolding relationship with a prostitute in the brothel and the internal conflict which torments him. The author, Leonid Andreyev, an acclaimed Russian playwright and writer of short fiction, was noted for the darkness in his work. This book was published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. ( Lee Smalley)

A collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry on travels in Lancashire, England, with occasional sorties into adjacent counties.

While riding a stage back to the city late in the summer, a youngster had no money to spend, and so gives his lucky piece as payment to a young girl selling berries by the roadside. As time passes, in the Adirondack mountains of northern New York state, a tale unfolds involving two young women, two young men, and a bevy of characters the likes of which lend to a series of events which make up a fascinating story. Constance was one not to be controlled, she was a free spirit, as in fairy tales, wont to follow the moment rather than ideas presented to her by others...

Twenty stories originally published in the Christmas editions of the magazines “Household Words” and “All The Year Round”. Some of the stories have little holiday sentiment and exhibit much of the indignation Dickens felt at the social and economic injustices of his day. Some of the stories were written in collaboration with other authors. The editor of this volume chose to omit those other chapters and include only Dickens' work. The result is that some of the stories are a bit choppy, not to say confusing.

There was no life on the asteroid, but the miles of rock-hewn corridors through which the earth party wandered left no doubt about the purpose of the asteroid. It was a mighty fortress, stocked with weapons of destruction beyond man's power to understand. And yet there was no life here, nor had there been for untold centuries. What race had built this stronghold? What unimaginable power were they defending against? Why was it abandoned? There was no answer, all was dead. But—not quite all. For in a room above the tomb-like fortress a powerful transmitter beamed its birdlike, fluting sounds toward earth...

A novel written in three volumes. In the golden age of steam, the London train wends its way across the Tamar into the strange and mystic land that is Cornwall, having left most of its length at Plymouth. A weary doctor gazes at the countryside, when the train grinds to a halt and his professional attention is demanded. A young woman. An apparent suicide. Who was she? What brought her to Cornwall? What drove her to kill herself? Or did she?

From 1843 to 1848, Charles Dickens wrote a series of five novellas to be published at Christmas. Most people are familiar with the first, "A Christmas Carol." The others are "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain."

Mrs Armytage is a widowed landowner, spirited, independent and very much used to having her own way and exercising total dominance over her family. She is acutely aware of social distinctions, proud of her power and prestige, and stands on her dignity to the point of becoming cold, judgemental and aloof. Her character flaws bring her into conflict with her children when her son Arthur announces his choice of a wife who is very much below their rank, and much will happen before Mrs Armytage learns to repent her behaviour...

Per the author: "The book has one high ambition. It has tried to tell the sad story of the wilderness itself—to show, from the woodsman's view-point, the play of great forces which have been tearing down his home and turning it into the flesh and bone of cities." But this story is much more than that. It revolves around Silas Strong and his distaste for the modernization and destruction of his beloved forest surroundings, and how it pleases him to teach younger folk how to appreciate that which has been given us...

In a rundown farmhouse near isolated, rural Dunwich, a bizarre family conjures and nurtures an evil entity from another realm, with the purpose of destroying the world and delivering it to ancient gods to rule, and only an aged university librarian can stop them. The Dunwich Horror was first published in 1929 in Weird Tales.

Haedaecker’s Theory claims that real-time communications across space is impossible. Paul Grayson believes that Z-wave technology will make real time communication possible. Paul sets out to prove his theory but there are those who don’t want him to succeed. Follow Paul’s adventures while he tries to prove his theory correct in the face of stiff opposition from those who do not want him to succeed.

A manhunt for a bank robber takes a determined and fixated New York City detective on a gripping, globe-spanning adventure, with many plot twists along the way. Arthur Stringer was a novelist, screenwriter and poet. He published 45 works of fiction and 15 other books in addition to writing numerous film scripts and articles. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stringer_(writer) This book is unrelated to the 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine and radio series of the same name. (Lee Smalley)

A 1919 pulp-press tale of deepest darkest Africa.