Contents of the ‘Books - Fiction’ Category
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth
By Jules Verne
“A Journey to the Interior of the Earth” is Jules Verne’s classic science fiction adventure about Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew Axel who discover an ancient document written by an Islandic adventurer who went to the center of the earth many years before.
Being the ever-ardent discoverer and scientist, Professor Liedenbrock immediately sets off to Iceland, taking Axel along with him. Together with their guide, Hans, they enter the weird and wonderful world deep beneath the surface of the earth.
A Martian Odyssey
A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories
Stanley G. Weinbaum is best known for his pioneering science fiction short story, A Martian Odyssey, published in 1934 to large (and continuing) praise, which introduces a sympathetic alien, Tweel.
Posted in Classic Science Fiction Novels, New Releases, Science Fiction, Short Story Collections, Stanley G. Weinbaum | 
Tags: A Martian Odyssey, classic science fiction novels, Manderpootz, mars, Parasite Planet, Pygmalion's Spectacles, Science Fiction, short stories, Stanley G. Weinbaum, The Adaptive Ultimate, The Circle of Zero, The Ideal, The Lotus Eaters, The Mad Moon, The Point of View, The Worlds of If, Tweel, Valley of Dreams
A Rip Van Winkle of the Kalahari
Seven Tales of South-West Africa
First published in 1915, these seven stories exemplify the beautiful, but arid and treacherous area that forms part of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa and Namibia (then South-West Africa).
Posted in Adventure Fiction, African Adventure Fiction, Frederick Cornell, New Releases, Short Story Collections, South African Fiction |
Tags: A Rip Van Winkle of the Kalahari, African Adventure, classic south african novels, Frederick Cornell, short stories, south africa, South African Fiction, south african short stories, south african stories
At the Earth’s Core
At the Earth’s Core is Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic science fiction novel. Adventurer David Innes and inventor Abner Perry drill to the core of the Earth with the machine built by Perry, called the “Iron Mole”.
They discover a weird and wonderful primitive world called Pellucidar with strange people and living beings. Here is no sense of time, and danger is on the lurk around every cranny and nook of this world.
Black Beauty
By Anna Sewell
One of the finest stories ever written, Black Beauty is an exciting and moving classic children’s narrative about a horse’s life and adventures from the horse’s point of view.
ISBN: 978-1-920265-53-3
Captain Blood
A high-seas adventure of the 1680’s.
Dr. Peter Blood, an Irish doctor, is wrongfully accused of treason in the aftermath of the Monmouth rebellion in 1685. He is sent to the island of Barbados in the Carribean to be sold into slavery.
Posted in Adventure Fiction, Books about Pirates, Books on Pirates, Captain Blood Book, New Releases, Pirate Adventure Fiction, Rafael Sabatini, Rafael Sabatini - Captain Blood, Rafael Sabatini Books |
Tags: adventure, Adventure Fiction, Captain Blood, pirate adventure, pirate tales, pirates, Rafael Sabatini
Classic Christmas Short Stories
I bring you this collection of classic Christmas short stories that I have enjoyed through the years in the hope that it will touch your heart as much as it did mine. — Martyn Demas.
Contents:
Greenmantle
By John Buchan
Greenmantle is a classic espionage thriller packed with action that is set in the First World War.
The reckless all-action hero Richard Hannay, first featured in John Buchan’s thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, is summoned to probe rumors of an uprising in the Muslim world.
Posted in Espionage Fiction, John Buchan, New Releases, Suspense/Thriller |
Tags: espionage, Greenmantle, John Buchan, suspense thriller, thriller
Hunters Out of Space
Jack Odin and Gunnar enter deep space to hunt down Grim Hagen who have killed millions of Opal’s people, and stolen their treasures, as well as Maya, their beloved princess.
Their aim – to find Grim Hagen and make him pay, and to get back Maya and the treasures.
Key Out of Time
By Andre Norton
Ashe Gordon and Ross Murdock, infuriated about the loss of their fellow American Time Agent, Travis Fox, on the planet Topaz, travel to a warm ocean planet, Hawaika, where they intend to set up a time gate.
The world is so different from what they expected that they decide on a risky experiment: travel into the past of the planet, accompanied by two mutant dolphins and a female agent of Polynesian ancestry.
Love Among the Chickens
A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm.
After seeing his friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge for the first time in years, author Jeremy Garnet is dragged along on holiday to Ukridge’s new chicken farm in Dorset.
Posted in Humor Fiction, New Releases, P. G. Wodehouse |
Tags: humor, Humor Fiction, Jeremy Garnet, Love Among the Chickens, P. G. Wodehouse, Ukridge
Murder at Bridge
By Anne Austin
“Suddenly Dundee stooped and stared with eyes that were widened with excitement and a certain amount of horror. Then he rose, and, standing far to one side, picked up the fat volume which lay on the shelf. As he had expected, a bullet whizzed noiselessly across the room and buried itself in the plaster of the wall opposite–a bullet which would have ploughed through his own heart if he had obeyed his first impulse and gone directly to the shelf to obey the instructions in the note.”
A whodunit from the 1930’s. Special Investigator Bonnie Dundee has to investigate a case of murder on actress Nita Selim during a game of bridge. Not only does he have to work through a number of suspects, but he also needs to find the murder weapon, a gun equipped with a silencer.
Murder in the Gunroom
The Lane Fleming collection of early pistols and revolvers was one of the best in the country. When Fleming was found dead on the floor of his locked gunroom, a revolver in his hand, the coroner’s verdict was “death by accident.”
But Gladys Fleming had her doubts. Enough at any rate to engage Colonel Jefferson Davis Rand–better known just as Jeff–private detective and a pistol-collector himself, to catalogue, appraise, and negotiate the sale of her late husband’s collection.
Northanger Abbey
By Jane Austen
Seventeen year-old Catherine Morland goes to Bath for the season as the guest of family friends Mr. and Mrs. Allen.
Catherine is a naive girl who also has an overactive imagination, which is further magnified by her obsession with gothic literature. She is captivated by Henry Tilney with his views on literature and his knowledge of history and the world. Henry’s father, General Tilney, invites Catherine to visit their estate, Northanger Abbey.
Plague Ship
By Andre Norton
The tramp-freighter spaceship Solar Queen had exclusive trading rights to Sargol and its fabulous gems.
But the crew’s bravery and resourcefulness strained to the breaking point as they met Sargol’s three challenges:
Planet of the Damned
72 HOURS IN HELL…
Dis was a harsh, inhospitable, dangerous place and the Magter made it worse. They might have been human once–but they were something else now. The Magter had only one desire–Kill! Kill everything, themselves, their planet, the universe if they could–
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
A humorous portrayal of the social atmosphere of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, Pride and Prejudice deals with the intelligent, but high-spirited Elizabeth Bennet who endeavors to stay true to her ideals while her dim-witted, meddlesome mother plots to see all five her vivacious daughters married and to secure her family’s destiny.
Twists and shocking revelations await Elizabeth who has to choose between the dashing Mr. Wickham and the aristocratic, but proud and aloof Mr. Darcy.
Scaramouche
A Romance of the French Revolution
Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Scaramouche starts off when Andre-Louis Moreau vows revenge after his best friend was killed in a mockery of a duel by an arrogant nobleman, Marquis de la Tour d’Azyr.
Sense and Sensibility
By Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility is the classic first novel by Jane Austen about the lives of the sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.
After the death of the sisters’ father, the estate passes to their older half-brother named John. The sisters are left in reduced circumstances and they have to move to a new home, a cottage on a distant relative’s property, where they experience both romance and heartbreak.
Space Platform
Reach for the Stars: We now accept space travel as a reality, but what of a city in space, built on an ever suspended platform?
When young Joe Kenmore came to the little desert town of Bootstrap to install pilot gyros in the top secret Space Platform project he hadn’t bargained on sabotage or murder or love. But Joe soon learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck the project.
Space Prison
By Tom Godwin
AFTER TWO CENTURIES…. “The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly–the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy them. Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern Empire … with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs!”
“Space Prison” is an epic tale of survival. After war between Humans and Gerns erupted, a human interstellar ship with eight thousand colonists is captured. Half of the group is left to die on a hellish planet called Ragnarok — a planet of high gravity, impossible temperature extremes, murderous wildlife, and no usable resources.
Storm Over Warlock
By Andre Norton
Stranded on the unfamiliar world of Warlock, Shann Lantee’s expedition camp has been wiped out by the Throgs, beings so alien that humans have yet to communicate with them.
And so Lantee was left alone and weaponless in the strange, hostile world, becoming the human prey of the aliens.
Strike of the Black Mamba
By Ian Kruger
The unthinkable has happened. An environmental organization warned the world against it. Still, nobody believed that it would turn out like this.
But Donald Morse proves everyone wrong. Defying all security measures, he manages to steal a shipment of nuclear material from a cargo ship destined for Japan’s nuclear power reactors.
Talents, Incorporated
Pretenders or Prophets? At best, the tiny Kandarian Air Fleet would fight until its last ship was blown into infinity. At worst, it would be annihilated without a chance.
To young Captain Bors, either option was unthinkable. The ruthless Dictator of Mekin had already conquered twenty-two helpless planets. Now he wanted Kandar’s unconditional surrender, or his vastly superior forces would blast it out of existence. It took a lot of guts, and the hope that is frequently born of despair, for a military man like Bors to throw in his lot with Talents, Incorporated, an untried, unscientific organization.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mark Twain’s classic novel about Huckleberry Finn, a teenaged misfit who has a tough time with his alcoholic father. After an adventure with his friend, Tom Sawyer, Huck’s father returns and kidnaps him.
Huck escapes and floats on a raft down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. Plenty of adventure and peril await them on their journey.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
By Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is Mark Twain’s classic story about a mischievous orphan who is cared for by his Aunt Polly. He lives in the carefree and wonderful world of boyhood on the banks of the Mississippi in the early-mid 1800s.
Tom and his friends go after adventure time and again, but one night he witnesses a murder by a fearsome character in town. Tom testifies against the murderer after the wrong man was accused of the murder, but the murderer escapes. Eventually Tom and his sweetheart, Beckey, get trapped in a cave. To make things worse, they run into the murderer inside the cave, who uses it as a hideaway.
The Defiant Agents
By Andre Norton
“A tiny sound–perhaps the scrape of a boot on a ladder. Travis edged back into a compartment. A flash of light momentarily lighted the corridor; the approaching figure was using an electric torch. Travis drew his knife with one hand, reversed it so he could use the heavy hilt as a silencer. The other was hurrying now, on his way to investigate the burned-out engine cabin. Travis could hear the rasp of his fast breathing. Now!”
Alien technology scavenged by U.S. and Russian scientists has started a race to colonize planets outside our solar system, but the U.S. scientists are losing the race.
The Girl in the Golden Atom
By Ray Cummings
This novel is a classic work of science fiction, and it was one of the first to explore the world of the atom.
The Girl in the Golden Atom is the story of a young chemist who finds a concealed atomic world within his mother’s wedding ring. Under a powerful microscope, he sees within the ring a beautiful young woman sitting in front of a cave. Captivated by her, he uses a method he discovered to shrink himself and does so to join her in her world.
The Great Impersonation
The year is 1913. The disgraced and formerly penniless aristocrat Sir Everard Dominey returns from German East Africa a reformed and wealthy man determined to take his place in English society. But is he Sir Everard or the German spy, Baron Leopold von Ragastein?
Leopold, educated at Eton and Oxford with the Englishman, bears a striking resemblance to Dominey and was often taken as his double at school. After a chance encounter in Africa, one of them has returned. But who?
Posted in E. Phillips Oppenheim, Espionage Fiction, New Releases |
Tags: E. Phillips Oppenheim, espionage, spy novel, suspense, The Great Impersonation
The Hidden Places
When Hollister returns from World War I, he is officially dead. He was so reported, so accepted 18 months earlier.
His wife married again. She and her husband vanished from England. And with his wife vanished his assets, his estate, by virtue of a pre-war arrangement which he never revoked.
The House on the Borderland
The House on the Borderland is a classic novel that facilitated the bridging of the gap between the British fantastic and supernatural authors of the later 19th century and modern horror fiction. The classic American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft listed this work by Hodgson as amongst his greatest influences.
In 1877, two gentlemen head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned the house. The diary’s torn pages hinted at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility.
The Obstacle Race
‘He bent lower. “We’ve got to risk something,” he said, and with a swiftness of decision that she had not expected he took her chin and turned her face fully upwards to his own. The colour rushed in vivid scarlet to her temples. She met his eyes for one fleeting second then closed her own with a gasp and a blind effort to escape that was instantly quelled. For he kissed her–he kissed her–pressing his lips to hers closely and ever more closely, as a man consumed with thirst draining the cup to the last precious drop.
When he let her go, she was burning, quivering, tingling from head to foot as if an electric current were coursing through and through her. And the citadel had fallen. She made no further attempt to keep him out.’
The Pirates of Zan
Because Bron Hoddan was a serious electronics engineer, he didn’t want any part of his particular planetary heritage. For he was from Zan – and Zan’s only occupation was space-ship piracy!
Therefore, Bron went to Walden, the most civilized planet of all.
The Rangeland Avenger
By Max Brand
He gave them the same chance his brother got … none at all.
“At once the blind anger faded from the eyes of Riley. By the weight of that first blow he knew that he had encountered a worthy foeman, and by the position of Cartwright he could tell that he had met a confident one. The big fellow was perfectly poised, with his weight well back on his right foot, his left foot feeling his way over the rough ground as he advanced, always collected for a heavy blow, or for a leap in any direction.
Posted in Max Brand, New Releases, Western |
Tags: action, Max Brand, The Rangeland Avenger, Western
The Red Seal
A whodunit from the 1920’s.
Twin sisters Helen and Barbara McIntyre give evidence against a burglar who suddenly dies in court, at first seemingly from a heart attack. They discover that the burglar was disguised in court and they recognize him as Helen’s fiancée after removing his disguise.
The Sea-Hawk
The Sea Hawk is another pirate adventure novel penned by Rafael Sabatini, author of Captain Blood. It was originally published in 1915 and is set in the late 16th century.
Sir Oliver Tressilian, a typical English sea-faring gentleman, is villainously betrayed by his jealous half-brother and is accused of murder. Sir Oliver is kidnapped off the Cornish coast, and forced to serve as a slave on a Spanish galley.
The Story of an African Farm
The Story of an African Farm (published 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron) was South African author Olive Schreiner’s first novel.
This book is generally recognized as one of the first feminist novels and also as the first great South African novel. This pioneering work caused quite a stir when it first appeared and it transformed the shape and course of the late Victorian novel. Schreiner unflinchingly deals with her society’s greatest fears, namely the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women’s social and political independence.
The Story of the Other Wise Man
During the time of the birth of Jesus, a fourth Wise Man, Artaban, sells all his possessions to buy three precious jewels which he hopes to present to the newborn Christ Child. Although he planned to journey with the other three Magi to Bethlehem, he is delayed and fails to rendezvous with them.
Artaban spends his whole life searching for the Christ, and in his search he gives away one, then two, and finally all three of his jewels to help others, but in the end his quest is fulfilled in unexpected ways.
Posted in Christmas Fiction, Henry Van Dyke, New Releases |
Tags: christmas, Henry Van Dyke, magi, The Story of the Other Wise Man, wise man, wise men
The Terror
During the First World War in Britain a series of unexplained deaths and murders occur with no sign of who or what is responsible.
“The working man told me about it, and added some dreadful details. Corpses so terribly maimed that coffins had been kept covered; faces mutilated as if by some gnawing animal…”
Posted in Arthur Machen, Horror/Paranormal Fiction, New Releases |
Tags: Arthur Machen, coffin, corpse, death, horror, murder, paranormal fiction, The Terror
The Thirty-Nine Steps
By John Buchan
“I realised that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.”
Richard Hannay returns to England from South Africa to start a new life, but he gets caught up in a plot to ruin the British war effort (the First World War). Soon Hannay has to flee from his pursuers and has to fight for his life while trying to reveal the cipher code that will uncover the plot.
Posted in Espionage Fiction, John Buchan, New Releases, Suspense/Thriller |
Tags: espionage, John Buchan, suspense thriller, The Thirty-Nine Steps, thriller
The Time Machine
By H.G. Wells
“The Time Machine”, H.G. Wells’ classic science fiction story, is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively.
The Time Traveller, a scientist and inventor, developed a time machine and travels to the year A.D. 802,701 in the future. He finds a peaceful race, the Eloi, who are unimaginative and incurious about the world.
The Time Traders
By Andre Norton
American scientists are investigating the fact that Russian scientists have discovered how to transport themselves back in time to learn long-forgotten secrets of the past. That is why young Ross Murdock, above average in intelligence but a destructively independent nonconformist, finds himself on a clandestine government project at a secret base in the Arctic.
The very qualities that make him a menace in civilized society are valuable traits in a man who must successfully act the part of a merchant trader of the Beaker people during the Bronze Age.
Triplanetary
Triplanetary was first serialized in Amazing Stories in 1934 and it later on formed the first of the Lensman series, where it set the stage for what is one of the greatest space-opera sagas ever written.
This original publication brings us to a distant planet inhabited by a highly developed aquatic race called the Nevians. They have managed to harness the atomic power of iron and have an enormous need for the metal to generate energy, but their planet has virtually no iron reserves.
Wonderful Bedtime Stories
“Wonderful Bedtime Stories” is a collection of 28 classic favorites and other lesser-known fairy tales and stories for young children that can be enjoyed at bedtime or any other time of the day.
Parents can read the stories to their children or those children who are already fluent readers can read it themselves.