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E-Book · Free to read · English

The eighteen nineties

Holbrook Jackson

Holbrook Jackson’s study presents the 1890s as a distinctive British cultural epoch, focusing on tendencies in art and ideas rather than a strict chronology. It links literary, artistic, and social movements in England with wider European influences, and treats the decade as one of experiment, conflict, and changing attitudes toward life, religion, and art. The revised edition notes that it largely follows the 1913 text, with added notes, clarifications, and a new illustration.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The history of civilisation in Scotland, Vol 3 (of 4)

John Mackintosh

This volume traces the impact of the Union of the Crowns on Scotland and follows the religious and political struggle that grew under James VI and Charles I. It covers disputes over episcopacy, the new liturgy, the rise of Covenanting opposition, the framing and spread of the Covenant, and the opening stages of conflict involving the Scottish Parliament, the English Parliament, and royal authority. The contents also include the Westminster Assembly and the adoption of the Westminster Confession of Faith, alongside Montrose’s campaigns and later negotiations over the king.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The espadrilles

Margaret St. Clair

In a Marsport bar, the narrator meets a gaunt spaceman in rope-soled espadrilles who asks for zwiff and begins telling a strange hard-luck story. The tale shifts to a repair stop on a small, dense planetoid with breathable atmosphere, glittering soil, and metallic, crystal-like trees. As the account continues, the planetoid seems increasingly uncanny, and the speaker reflects on a life that is not soft and wet but something harder and stranger beyond human experience.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Maxwell Drewitt, vol. 1 of 2

Mrs. J. H. Riddell

The opening presents Maxwell Drewitt and his companion Timothy Ryan in a cottage near Duranmore Bay, Ireland, while framing the story as Maxwell’s life. It characterizes Drewitt as outwardly composed but morally untrustworthy, and Ryan as an easier, more ambivalent man shaped by circumstance. Their conversation centers on a troubled marriage plan involving Drewitt’s uncle, Kincorth, and the financial disorder surrounding the family estate.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

Harry Alverson Franck

This travel book describes the author’s observations of Japan and Formosa, with particular attention to Japanese family life, etiquette, housing, and everyday customs. One episode centers on arriving in Tokyo after a hotel fire, then being received into a Japanese home where the details of greeting, footwear, bathing, and sleeping reveal cultural differences and the practical inconveniences of Westerners living in such houses. The listed subjects also place the work within descriptions of social life and customs in both Japan and Taiwan.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The poems of Thomas Gordon Hake

Thomas Gordon Hake

This volume gathers selected poems by Thomas Gordon Hake from books issued over more than fifty years, including early work from The Piromides and later pieces from The New Day, alongside verses not previously published. The collection presents Hake as a 19th-century English poet with a solemn, meditative voice, often concerned with dreams, sleep, and deliberate thought. It also frames his verse as distinctive in tone and carefully shaped across a long career.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Killer

James E. Gunn

James E. Gunn’s short science-fiction story follows Sam Newman, a commercial pilot whose troubled marriage to wealthy Fran ends in murder. Fleeing with only a little fuel left, he brings a yacht down on a green world that seems to offer life, wonder, and a possible new beginning. The tale frames his arrival as both an escape and the start of a tragic encounter, tied to his own violent nature and the strange life he finds beyond Earth.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The second person singular, and other essays

Alice Meynell

This volume gathers a selection of Alice Meynell’s literary essays, chosen from pieces not yet reprinted in book form. The essays shown here focus on Shakespeare, especially his treatment of kingship, royalty, and the contrast between splendor and mortality in the plays. The opening material also includes an editor’s note explaining the selection’s preparation at the request of the Oxford University Press.

E-Book · Free to read · English

China

Harry Alverson Franck

This travel book presents China as a subject for young readers, aiming to give a factual picture of the country’s land and people through close observation. It emphasizes everyday life, customs, and geographic understanding, while treating China’s history and political problems only briefly. The author’s long experience in travel and work in remote places is presented as the basis for the book’s account.

E-Book · Free to read · English

A little help for Hawkins

W. C. Tuttle

Slim Hawkins is a cowpuncher on the Cross J outfit whose sour mood puzzles the other men until he explains that an aunt’s will has left him a chance at money only if he marries and can also show he can spend a large sum before a deadline. His friends keep needling him about his troubles, his appearance, and his prospects, while trying to make sense of the inheritance condition and what it means for his future.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Inside information

W. C. Tuttle

Set in Piperock, Montana, this western short story follows Ike Harper as he watches the town’s familiar figures: Magpie Simpkins, sheriff; Judge Steele; and three odd men known as Mighty Jones, Dirty Shirt Jones, and Jewelry Jones. Their names and habits are sketched in comic detail, and the action centers on a letter addressed to A. C., which all three Joneses claim as theirs, sparking a dispute at Wick Smith’s store and post-office.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Culture's garland

Eugene Field

This volume presents Eugene Field as a Chicago humorist whose wit is broad, gentle, and sharply observant rather than merely conventional. It brings together lively sketches and raillery aimed at Chicago foibles and pretensions, while suggesting that the book represents only a small part of Field’s range as journalist, poet, and storyteller.

E-Book · Free to read · English

For the parson of Paradise

W. C. Tuttle

In Paradise, Magpie Simpkins and Ike Harper encounter the town’s struggling parson, Old Testament Tilton, whose church is short of money and whose efforts to raise funds have gone badly. After Magpie gives him a little cash, the two men go into Mike Pelly’s saloon, where a loud-talking stranger reveals himself as John McBeth, a tragedian and former stage star. The men then discuss arranging a performance in Paradise, with Magpie saying it would be held under Baptist Church auspices and the proceeds split with the church.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Alias Whispering White

W. C. Tuttle

Ike Harper and Magpie Simpkins are running a modest mine when Franklyn Burt, a mining engineer, turns up and wins their trust with his practical knowledge. Burt later receives a letter that upsets him because it concerns Marion White, the woman he hopes to marry, and her guardians, the Van Veens, who have been managing her life and fortune. The story also explains that Marion’s uncle, Samuel White, was mistakenly reported dead in Brazil and is still alive, which has complicated the inheritance and the marriage plans.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Local color in Loco-Land

W. C. Tuttle

Two writers travel into Montana seeking firsthand material for an Old West story and decide to find it by going to where the frontier life is still immediate. On the stage from Paradise, they meet Dirty Shirt Jones and Ike Harper, whose rough humor and talk quickly shape the scene. Their conversation turns to literary ambitions, local color, and a request to be introduced to an outlaw, with the sheriff and Magpie also coming into the story.

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