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The first story of the series "The colour of the armband", unveiled in a new era long after wars and peace. A world with armbands. Colour armbands and stripes was the only rule everybody kept and respected in this new world probably because there was no way to enforce it or protect you from ‘friendly’ fire. It was about survival and survival is enough reason to enforce even armbands with colours you never liked. Like Sven who never liked red. Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

Father Brown is petting a dog, next to a young man named Fiennes. The young man informs him of a recent murder and shows him a newspaper clipping describing the details of the case. Father Brown on his 5th adventure. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer,philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the «prince of paradox». Time magazine observed of his writing style: «Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.» In Public Domain First published 1923 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

"Wych Street! Wych Street be damned! If he said Wych Street was in the moon, you should have agreed with him." There is no such thing as a typical Aumonier story or a typical Aumonier character. Some of his stories are comedies; some are moving stories of missed opportunity or loss. Some are war stories. He wrote with equal empathy about the very poor, the very rich, men, women, movers and shakers, hobos, pompous husbands, shallow wives, war heroes, deserters, idealists, thieves. All his stories have in common is a great ease of style and "a sense of line that most of us should envy," as Galsworthy put it. Even Aumonier's least significant stories—ones that he wrote purely as entertainments—are written with remarkable fluidity and wit. In Public Domain First published 1929 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

As it was an excursion, the Fall of Rome carried a band and booths laden with many delicious superfluities such as pop-corn and the misleading compound known as "salt-water taffy." Mrs. Turtle brought Romeo to the excursion with the same assurance that a woman of another stamp brings her Pekingese dog to a restaurant table. While the Fall of Rome sounded a warning whistle, and hawsers were loosed she adjusted her veil and took cognizance of fellow passengers. In spite of wealth and "owning her own automobile," Mrs. Turtle's fetish was democratic popularity. She greeted one after another. In Public Domain First published 1917 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

She'd paid good money to see the inevitable... and then had to work to make it happen! There were two important things—one, that she was very old; two, that Mr. Thirkell was taking her to God. For hadn't he patted her hand and said: "Mrs. Bellowes, we'll take off into space in my rocket, and go to find Him together." And that was how it was going to be. Oh, this wasn't like any other group Mrs. Bellowes had ever joined. In her fervor to light a path for her delicate, tottering feet, she had struck matches down dark alleys, and found her way to Hindu mystics who floated their flickering, starry eyelashes over crystal balls. She had walked on the meadow paths with ascetic Indian philosophers imported by daughters-in-spirit of Madame Blavatsky. She had made pilgrimages to California's stucco jungles to hunt the astrological seer in his natural habitat. She had even consented to signing away the rights to one of her homes in order to be taken into the shouting...

"Fritz Bagger had just been admitted to the bar. He had come home and entered his room, seeking rest. All his mental faculties were now relaxed after their recent exertion, and a long-restrained power was awakened. He had reached a crisis in life: the future lay before him,—the future, the future! What was it to be? He was twenty-four years old, and could turn himself whichever way he pleased, let fancy run to any line of the compass." Meïr Aron Goldschmidt born in Vordingborg, Denmark, October 26, 1819 and died in August 15, 1887. He was a Danish publisher, journalist and novelist. He belonged to a strictly Orthodox Jewish family of merchant and he was the founding editor of the satirical and political magazine Corsaren. Translated by Carl Larsen. In Public Domain First published 1870 Ovi eBook Publishing 2023 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

Lenton Croft is the country seat (near Twyford) of Sir James Norris. Meeting Hewitt at the train station, Sir James outlines the case: three times in the last year, female guests have had valuable jewellery stolen from them. Each time the windows to the room in question were only slightly opened or closed altogether, or people were in a nearby room. Each time a spent match was found just where the jewellery went missing. A Martin Hewitt, investigator, mystery. Arthur George Morrison, born 1 November 1863, died 4 December 1945, was an English writer and journalist known for realistic novels, for stories about working-class life in the East End of London, and for detective stories featuring a specific detective, Martin Hewitt. He also collected Japanese art and published several works on the subject. Much of his collection entered the British Museum, through purchase and bequest. Morrison's best known work of fiction is his novel A Child of the Jago In Public Domain First Published 1...

Luckily for “Ham” Hammond it was mid-winter when the mudspout came. Mid-winter, that is, in the Venusian sense, which is nothing at all like the conception of the season generally entertained on Earth, except possibly, by dwellers in the hotter regions of the Amazon basin, or the Congo. They, perhaps, might form a vague mental picture of winter on Venus by visualizing their hottest summer days, multiplying the heat, discomfort and unpleasant denizens of the jungle by ten or twelve. Stanley Grauman Weinbaum born April 4, 1902 and died December 14, 1935, was an American science fiction writer. In Public Domain First Published 1935 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

“In my dreams I would walk on hot, shouts of needy blue air, driftwood that came from the ocean bed, white bones as white as white writing, and musings. I made Johannesburg my temporary home.” Pale are the ripples that curl on top of these drinks we are having. Mine tastes like dark chocolate (the expensive kind you can only get at specific shops). We’re sitting outside the benches of a restaurant, not rushing to get anywhere. I want to be saturated by you, launched into oblivion. Abigail George studied film and television production for a short while, which was followed by a brief stint as a trainee at a production house. She is a writer and poet. She has lived in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth but she is currently living in Port Elizabeth. She has had poetry published in print and online. She has had short fiction published online. In 2005 and 2008 she was awarded grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg. She is not purely devoted to poetry but to pursuing writing fullt...

In 1919-1920 Edgar Wallace wrote a series of ten short stories featuring the investigative reporter York Symon for publication in the British monthly The Novel Magazine. In 1928 the series was reprinted in Pearson's Weekly. "The Reporter" is a detective story about a police reporter named Wise Symon and his tricks of the trade. Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in London, England in 1875. He received his early education at St. Peter's School and the Board School, but after a frenetic teens involving a rash engagement and frequently changing employment circumstances, Wallace went into the military. He served in the Royal West Kent Regiment in England and then as part of the Medical Staff Corps stationed in South Africa. Whilst in the Balkans covering the Russo-Japanese War, Wallace found the inspiration for The Four Just Men, published in 1905. Over the rest of his life, Wallace produced some 173 books and wrote 17 plays. In Public Domain First Published 1919 Ovi ...

The story's protagonist takes a trip across the Goltva river on the Easter Eve to visit a local church and enjoy the nightly Easter festivities. On his way he is engaged in a conversation with a monk ferryman named Ieronym, a slightly eccentric 30-something man who is deeply shattered by the recent death of his best friend and mentor, monk Nikolai. The latter appears to have been a genius master of Akathist, who had never in his life had one single reader or listener of his wonderful stories, beside Ieronym. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, born 29 January 1860, died 15 July 1904, was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he...

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot where, a decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying monument to the nation’s glory and his own vanity. Baroness Emma Orczy (23 September 1865 – 12 November 1947), usually known as Baroness Orczy (the name under which she was published) or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright. She is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist in order to save French aristocrats from «Madame Guillotine» during the French Revolution, establishing the «hero with a secret identity» in popular culture. In Public Domain Fir...

“And to the people of Almont she was still Abbie Snover, or 'that Snover girl.' Age in Almont is not reckoned in years, but by marriage, and by children, and grandchildren.” She was not quite forty years old, but so aged was she in appearance that another twenty-five years would not find her perceptibly older. And to the people of Almont she was still Abbie Snover, or “that Snover girl.” Age in Almont is not reckoned in years, but by marriage, and by children, and grandchildren. Nearly all the young men of Abbie’s generation had gone to the City, returning only in after years, with the intention of staying a week or two weeks, and leaving at the end of a day, or two days. So Abbie never married. Francis Buzzell (1882 - 1929). His father was editor of the Romeo Hydrant, which Mr. Buzzell mentions in his Almont stories as the “Almont Hydrant”. At twenty-one became Chicago newspaper reporter, and later, associate editor, Popular Mechanics. In 1912 began literary career by publishi...

“I am trying my eyes against yours. If I can’t give you fifty out of a hundred I’ll renounce my private detectorial ambition for ever.” It was eight o’clock at night and raining, scarcely a time when a business so limited in its clientele as that of a coin dealer could hope to attract any customer, but a light was still showing in the small shop that bore over its window the name of Baxter, and in the even smaller office at the back the proprietor himself sat reading the latest Pall Mall. His enterprise seemed to be justified, for presently the door bell gave its announcement, and throwing down his paper Mr. Baxter went forward. Ernest Bramah, English author in the fields of humour, mystery and politico-science fiction. Best known for the Kai Lung and Max Carrados (the blind detective) series. In Public Domain First published 1914 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English novelist G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr. John O’Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer,philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the «prince of paradox». Time magazine observed of his writing style: «Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.» In Public Domain First published 1926 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads ...

“I could easily give him another chance, and send him forth again tomorrow. But no! His feelings are too tender.” “Dickon,” cried Mother Rigby, “a coal for my pipe!” The pipe was in the old dame’s mouth when she said these words. She had thrust it there after filling it with tobacco but without stooping to light it at the hearth where, indeed, there was no appearance of a fire having been kindled that morning. Forthwith, however, as soon as the order was given, there was an intense red glow out of the bowl of the pipe and a whiff of smoke from Mother Rigby’s lips. Whence the coal came and how brought hither by an invisible hand, I have never been able to discover. “Good!” quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head. “Thank ye, Dickon! And now for making this scarecrow. Be within call, Dickon, in case I need you again.” Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religio...

I had been reading a ghost story to Mrs. Sefton, and I laid it down at the end with a little shrug of contempt. “What utter nonsense!” I said. Mrs. Sefton nodded abstractedly above her fancywork. “That is. It is a very commonplace story indeed. I don’t believe the spirits of the departed trouble themselves to revisit the glimpses of the moon for the purpose of frightening honest mortals—or even for the sake of hanging around the favourite haunts of their existence in the flesh. If they ever appear, it must be for a better reason than that.” Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following. In Public Domain First published: 1901 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy rea...

The Earth lay powerless beneath those loathsome, yellowish monsters that, sheathed in cometlike globes, sprang from the skies to annihilate man and reduce his cities to ashes. When Cyrus R. Thurston bought himself a single-motored Stoughton job he was looking for new thrills. Flying around the east coast had lost its zest: he wanted to join that jaunty group who spoke so easily of hopping off for Los Angeles. The Earth lay powerless beneath those loathsome, yellowish monsters that, sheathed in cometlike globes, sprang from the skies to annihilate man and reduce his cities to ashes. Charles Willard Diffin (1884-1966) was an American engineer, salesman and author. He is known best for his science-fiction stories, although he published several works in the genres of Western and mystery. In Public Domain First published: 1930 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

Tom's Extraordinary Machine Glowed—and the Years Were Banished from Old Crompton's Body. But There Still Remained, Deep-seated in His Century-old Mind, the Memory of His Crime. Two miles west of the village of Laketon there lived an aged recluse who was known only as Old Crompton. As far back as the villagers could remember he had visited the town regularly twice a month, each time tottering his lonely way homeward with a load of provisions. He appeared to be well supplied with funds, but purchased sparingly as became a miserly hermit. And so vicious was his tongue that few cared to converse with him, even the young hoodlums of the town hesitating to harass him with the banter usually accorded the other bizarre characters of the streets. Harl Vincent (October 19, 1893 – May 5, 1968) was the nom de plume of Harold Vincent Schoepflin, an American mechanical engineer and science fiction author. He was published regularly in science fiction pulp magazines. In Public Domain First pu...

“Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement.” There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle’s grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the camp,—“Cherokee Sal.” Bret Harte (HART; born Francis Brett Hart; August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American s...

“Gently turning over on its side, it opened its great mouth, and in an instant, with a rush, it came directly at me.” As the two steamers passed each other there was a great waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Suddenly there was a scream from the Sunda. It came from Signora Rochita, the prima donna of an opera troupe, which was coming to America in that ship. “I have lost my bracelet,” she cried in Italian, and then, turning to the passengers, she repeated the cry in very good English. Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 – April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children’s fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century. In Public Domain First published: 1891 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

The Master looked at the man beside him and said calmly: “It is well as it is—all well!” It was a plain brick house, three full stories, with four broad chimneys, and overhanging eaves. The tradition was that it had been a colonial tavern—a dot among the fir-covered northern hills on the climbing post-road into Canada. The village scattered along the road below the inn was called Albany—and soon forgotten when the railroad sought an opening through a valley less rugged, eight miles to the west. Rather more than thirty years ago the Doctor had arrived, one summer day, and opened all the doors and windows of the neglected old house, which he had bought from scattered heirs. He was a quiet man, the Doctor, in middle life then or nearly so; and he sank almost without remark into the world of Albany, where they raise hay and potatoes and still cut good white pine off the hills. Robert Welch Herrick was a novelist who was part of a new generation of American realists. His novels deal with th...

“The duties of the priesthood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.” There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. James Aug...

“I think his point of view is greatly inferior to yours, but I happen to prefer the viewpoint of a donkey to that of a mouse. ” So of late I had been spending my days very seriously trying wholeheartedly to get to the office on time just once, so that I could refer to it next time my father accused me of never getting anywhere on time. I hadn’t succeeded yet, but fortunately the N. J. Wells Corporation was wealthy enough to survive even without the full-time services of Dixon Wells, or should I say even with them? Anyway, I’m sure my father preferred to have me late in the morning after an evening with van Manderpootz than after one with Tips Alva or Whimsy White, or one of the numerous others of the ladies of the ‘vision screen. Even in the twenty-first century he retained a lot of old-fashioned ideas. Van Manderpootz had ceased to remember that he was as modest and shrinking as a violet. “It has just occurred to me,” he announced impressively, “that years have character much as human...

If there were bars on the windows the two-storey Filmer School could be mistaken for a jail.  As it is, the brick below the windows is stained from the dripping rain of the years, the front grounds are parched, the trees leafless.  It could be autumn or spring, it’s hard to tell.   The sense of desertion is everywhere.  There is the photographer who took the picture: H.C. Branch of Webster, Mass., his name burned into the lower right-hand corner of the photograph as well as printed below that.   In the upper right-hand corner of the photograph the Stars-and-Stripes is waving in the wind - the flag would have been flying atop its pole only when school was in session.  That’s what the photograph says. Richard Stanford, When I’m not writing short stories and essays or producing documentary films in Montréal, I can be found mucking about in my gardens trying to create the perfect eggplant. 1st Edition Ovi eBook Publishing 2011 2nd Edition Ovi eBook Publish...

“She expected, of course, to find it full of gold pieces that would buy the grand house and the gardener and the maid that her father had spoken about.” The Flower family lived in a little house in a broad grassy meadow, which sloped a few rods from their front door down to a gentle, silvery river. Right across the river rose a lovely dark green mountain, and when there was a rainbow, as there frequently was, nothing could have looked more enchanting than it did rising from the opposite bank of the stream with the wet, shadowy mountain for a background. All the Flower family would invariably run to their front windows and their door to see it. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (October 31, 1852 – March 13, 1930) was an American author. Although she produced a dozen volumes of short stories and as many novels, Freeman is remembered chiefly for the first two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891), and the novel Pembroke...

The fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not been an ordinary one. She was French, of Marseilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially when she said “C’est bien!”; and yet, at the age of forty, here she was in the desert of Sahara. The fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not been an ordinary one. She was French, of Marseilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially when she said “C’est bien!” and had been an extremely coquettish and lively girl, with a strong will of her own and a passionate love of pleasure and of town life. From her talk when she was seventeen, you would have gathered that if she ever moved from Marseilles it would be to go to Paris. Nothing else would be good enough for her. She felt herself born to play a part in some great city. Robert Hichens (Robert Smythe Hichens, 14 November 1864 – 20 July 1950) was an English journalist, novelist, music lyricist, short story writer, music critic and collaborated on successful plays. He is best remembered as a sat...

Lee Hayden had sent eleven men to their death in deep space. Now he wanted only to die himself. It was at this crucial point that he met the man with the golden eyes. He lay in the gutter. In his mouth was the taste of whiskey and defeat. There was mud and filth on his face, on his two-week shirt, on his rag-tag suit; and as the street and the buildings rippled and wavered before his eyes, a tape recorder in his mind played over and over: You’re through, Hayden—all washed up—this is the bottom—you can’t go any lower—Lee Hayden—boy genius—all washed up—you made the trip in a hurry, son—right down from the top to the bottom in nothing flat—why don’t you give up, why don’t you kite off, you gutless wonder of the ages—too weak to live—too yellow to die— David Vern Reed (born David Levine; 13 December 1914 – 11 August 1994), was an American writer, best known for his work on the Batman comic book during the 1950s in a run that included a revamp of the Batplane and the introduction of Deadsh...

Joan made a motion of her head and her free arm toward the wood, the wood which had been searched a dozen times over like a pocket. “In there,” she answered carelessly. “Wiv the wood-ladies.” The pine-trees of the wood joined their branches into a dome of intricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children sat, sunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that slanted in made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the elder of the pair, was trying to explain why she had wished to come here from the glooms of the lesser wood beyond. Perceval Gibbon (4 November 1879 – 30 May 1926) was an author and journalist, serving for the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, as well as for other publications. He is best remembered for his short stories, the best of which often contained an ironic twist at the end. In Public Domain First published: 1912 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks ...

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded, by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction. She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth. Natural fineness, instinct for what is elegant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destinies and social force...

“The whole region seemed to have caught its breath, to be smothered under a pall of stillness, unbroken except for some occasional distant earthquake of thunder ” By the side of a road which wanders in company of a stream across a region of Pennsylvania farmland that is called “Paradise” because of its beauty, you may still mark the ruins of a small brick cabin in the depths of a grove. In summertime ivy drapes its jagged fragments and the pile might be lost to notice but that at dusk the trembling leaves of the vine have a way of whispering to the nerves of your horse and setting them too in a tremble. And the people in the village beyond have a belief that three troubled human beings lie buried under those ruins, and that at night, or in a storm, they sometimes cry aloud in their unrest. The village is Bustlebury, and its people have a legend that on a memorable night there was once disclosed to a former inhabitant the secret of that ivied sepulchre. In Public Domain First published:...

“When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice.” None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation. Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism....

“Writing about a woman in love is challenging enough, as it is on its own. Stars falling down.” I am having fish and nothing else. Fish rubbed with salt and pepper into its belly. Food has become compensation for love, the phases of the moon, for a collection of short stories, for shame, for fantasy, for literary revelation, for having the refreshing mind of a child sometimes. The light is like a blue screen, electric and sharp. Abigail George studied film and television production for a short while, which was followed by a brief stint as a trainee at a production house. She is a writer and poet. She has lived in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth but she is currently living in Port Elizabeth. She has had poetry published in print and online. She has had short fiction published online. In 2005 and 2008 she was awarded grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg. She is not purely devoted to poetry but to pursuing writing fulltime. Storytelling for her has always been a phenomena...

Overhead, aeroplanes were buzzing angrily. He seemed to be suddenly transported from the kingdom of God to the pit of darkness. To look at old Sam Gates you would never suspect him of having nerves. His sixty-nine years of close application to the needs of the soil had given him a certain earthy stolidity. To observe him hoeing, or thinning out a broad field of turnips, hardly attracted one’s attention, he seemed so much part and parcel of the whole scheme. He blended into the soil like a glorified swede. Nevertheless, the half-dozen people who claimed his acquaintance knew him to be a man who suffered from little moods of irritability. Stacy Aumonier (31 March 1877 – 21 December 1928) was a British writer, sometimes mistakenly credited as Stacey Aumonier. Between 1913 and 1928, he wrote more than 85 short stories, 6 novels, a volume of character studies, and a volume of 15 essays. It was as a short-story writer that he was most highly regarded. In Public Domain First published: 1921 O...

George Washington was the father of his country. I am not George Washington. My name is Andrew Jones, and it is because of me there will be no more Joneses in the world. There will be, in fact, no more anybody. This is the end of the world. It did not come through fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper, from solar catastrophe or man’s suicidal mis-use of atomic power or any of the other fearful possibilities with which the Sunday-supplement writers once terrified us. It came through the exposure of an age-old conspiracy. I did it. My excuse is the eternal excuse of the scientist: I sought the truth. How it was used was not my concern. James Edwin Gunn (July 12, 1923 – December 23, 2020) was an American science fiction writer, editor, scholar, and anthologist. His work as an editor of anthologies includes the six-volume Road to Science Fiction series. He won the Hugo Award for “Best Related Work” in 1983 and he won or was nominated for several other awards for his non-fiction works in th...

“The cleverest crook in the world can’t enter a room without leaving his visiting card in some way or other. It’s up to you to find that card and read the name on it.” “Mr Drummond! Wire for Mr. Drummond! Mr. Drummond, please!” It was the monotonous, oft-repeated call of a Western Union boy—according to my friend Bill Quinn, formerly of the United States Secret Service—that really was responsible for solving the mystery which surrounded the disappearance of $130,000 in gold from the Philadelphia Mint. “The boy himself didn’t have a thing to do with the gold or the finding of it,” admitted Quinn, “but his persistence was responsible for locating Drummond, of the Secret Service, just as he was about to start on a well-earned vacation in the Maine woods. In Public Domain First published: 1921 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

“...till they saw that the marks were pointed prints, as if caused by the hoofs of some monstrous goat that had leaped and stamped upon him.” The little village of St. Faith’s nestles in a hollow of wooded hill up on the north bank of the river Fawn in the county of Hampshire huddling close round its gray Norman church as if for spiritual protection against the fays and fairies, the trolls and “little people,” who might be supposed still to linger in the vast empty spaces of the New Forest, and to come after dusk and do their doubtful businesses. Once outside the hamlet you may walk in any direction (so long as you avoid the high road which leads to Brockenhurst) for the length of a summer afternoon without seeing sign of human habitation, or possibly even catching sight of another human being. Edward Frederic Benson (24 July 1867 – 29 February 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. In Public Domain First published: 1907 Ovi eBook Pu...

Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who is featured in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by English novelist G. K. Chesterton. Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and keen understanding of human nature. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt Rev. Msgr. John O’Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer,philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the «prince of paradox». Time magazine observed of his writing style: «Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.» In Public Domain First published 1926 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads ...

“Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward beside us; Ailie’s hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was soaked with his tears.” Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted as only lovers and boys know how or why. John Brown (22 September 1810 – 11 May 1882) was a Scottish physician and essayist known for his three-volume Horae Subsecivae (Leisure Hours, 1858), containing essays and papers on art, medical history and biography. Best remembered are his dog story “Rab and his Friends” (1859) and his essays “Pet Marjorie” (1863), on Marjorie Fleming, the ten-year-old prodigy and alleged “pet” of Walter Scott, “Our Dogs”, “Minchmoor”, and “The Enterkine” In Public Domain First published: 1859 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

“As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger.” As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the reader that I have no ulterior design in making this assertion. A long course of light reading has forewarned me what every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such a statement. The storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be detected. I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred to me. Bret Harte (HART; born Francis Brett Hart; August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the Cal...

The Tarchiki were the universe's worst pupils—and as a teacher, Duncan was a first-rate carpenter! Duncan? No, he wasn’t the Agent just before you. He was here in 2180—oh, a good thirty years back, Earth-time. The natives say hundreds of years, but they’re a short-lived lot. The way they cut each other’s throats, it’s a wonder any of them live out the life span they’ve got, anyway. I came out when Duncan did—knew him pretty well, as well as anybody could. A perfect fool. Knowing him was a real education. Do anything the other way from the way Duncan did it, and you’d be all right. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. Well set-up man, around thirty when he got here, intelligent face, good talker, had a degree—but a fool. Seemed as if he couldn’t do anything right. He told me once that he’d been married, and that it had broken up. In Public Domain First published: 1956 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! A...

Murder in Rome express. M. Floçon was an experienced detective, and he knew so well that he ought to be on his guard against the most plausible suggestions, that he did not like to make too much of these discoveries. Arthur Joseph Griffith (31 March 1871 – 12 August 1922) was an Irish writer, newspaper editor and politician who founded the political party Sinn Féin. He led the Irish delegation at the negotiations that produced the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, and served as the president of Dáil Éireann from January 1922 until his death later in August. In Public Domain First published: 1907 Ovi eBook Publishing 2022 Read it online HERE ! Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it as PDF HERE ! All eBooks and downloads are FREE !

I had entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France. You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stock broker thinks he must have his chambre au moyen âge. Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier’s work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as disparate as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Pound, Eliot, James, Proust and Wilde. In Public Domain First published: 1920 Ovi eBook Pub...