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Life of a licensed victualler's daughter

Mary Ann Ashford

Mary Ann Ashford presents the early life of a licensed victualler’s daughter, beginning with her decision to describe her own history after seeing a fictional servant story advertised in London. She traces her family background through her father’s apprenticeship and work in trade, then turns to her mother’s Scottish parents and the difficulties that followed her grandfather’s financial suretyship and death. The account sets out the circumstances of the family before the author’s own service years and later life are introduced.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Squee

Margaret St. Clair

During a long return voyage from Ganymede, a cramped spaceship’s crew struggles with isolation and Dr. Neil’s experiments in artificial human reproduction. Mechanic Jacobsen builds a small robot squirrel that becomes an unexpected source of companionship. Its place aboard the ship brings the crew’s tensions into sharper focus.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Recollections of Juliana

Clare I. MacDonald

Recollections of Juliana presents memories of Juliana, an older Black woman and long-serving household figure on a plantation or island estate in South Carolina. The narrator recalls first meeting her after marrying Juliana’s master, and the uneasy relationship that developed as Juliana tried to manage the household in her own forceful way. The book also includes stories Juliana tells about her past, including her 12-year courtship with Toby and her work for Mr. Bly at the old plantation house.

E-Book · Free to read · English

In the scarlet star

Jack Williamson

In El Paso in 1930, a science-fiction fan meets Jimmy Miles, a struggling electrical engineer with a fascination for odd objects. Over lunch, Miles explains that he bought a star-shaped red crystal from a pawnshop, traced to ruins in Chihuahua, and spent weeks testing it in near-poverty. He believes the crystal is a link to another world and shows how he tried sending his watch through it.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The castaways

James Otis

James Otis’s The Castaways opens aboard the schooner Sea Queen in Brooklyn as it prepares to leave dock in summer heat for a voyage to Mexico. A boy named Ben talks with the cook, Jake, about the captain, the tugboat, and the arrival of passengers, while their conversation reveals concern over the crowded trip ahead. When Captain Irwin returns with a stern, bearded man and a reluctant little girl, Ben forms an uneasy first impression of the newcomers.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Buzzards

W. C. Tuttle

Rex Morgan returns home after his mother’s funeral to find himself alone, penniless, and unsure of his past. Shielded from the world by his mother and educated privately, he has little preparation for earning a living or understanding the family secrets surrounding his father and their finances. His neighbor Amos Weed then offers him work driving a grocery delivery wagon, forcing Rex toward a life he has never known.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Spawn of the comet

Otis Adelbert Kline

Otis Adelbert Kline’s science-fiction novel follows Dick Perry, a young Chicago desk worker, and his fiancée Sue Davis as they spend a weekend at her father’s country home. The story frames their quiet afternoon with the history of Green’s comet, whose close passage near Earth is linked to ominous disturbances and a looming threat to terrestrial life. As a mail plane approaches overhead, an unusual cloud in the sky becomes part of the scene, hinting at the strange events to come.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Ashes

Theodore Thomas Flynn

Set in the D. & R. railroad works, the story follows Juan Mendoza, a quiet ash pit worker who labors through the night amid smoke, machinery, and the pit’s dangerous waters. While walking to work, he hears a faint cry from an empty freight car and finds a starving puppy abandoned inside. He rescues the animal, feeds it, names it Sammee, and brings it to the pit crew, where the men react with curiosity and one co-worker responds harshly.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Mrs. Mayo's second husband

Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

Hunter Mayo lies on his deathbed after being told to make his will, and he becomes disturbed by the thought that his young wife Elinor may marry again. He asks her to promise never to remarry, but she refuses and admits she may have a second husband someday. Elinor then argues that their marriage lacked the harmony and mutual understanding she had hoped for, and that each had failed to meet the other’s ideal.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The next-to-last laugh

Raoul Whitfield

At Rook Field, test pilots and inventors take on a stream of experimental aircraft, and Eric Burnson brings in a small single-seat Gull built on bird-flight ideas. The story centers on the tension between Burnson and Joe Curtis after Joe refuses to fly the plane and mocks it, while Al, the narrator, agrees to inspect and test the risky machine. The Gull is described as a highly unusual, tricky design meant to take off and land in very short spaces.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Snow-berries

Alice Cary

Alice Cary’s Snow-berries opens with an autumn evening on the Ohio, where a stranger lands near Little Sandy Creek and climbs toward the village of Lewisburgh. The settlement is presented as a recent French-descended community of farmers, surrounded by orchards, gardens, children, pets, and nearby Native trade, and the stranger is warmly received at an outdoor supper and evening dance.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The book of a naturalist

W. H. Hudson

W. H. Hudson’s The book of a naturalist is a collection of essays and sketches on natural history and animal life. The author explains that some pieces are new while others were previously published in periodicals, and he frames the volume as observations from a naturalist’s perspective. One extended group of chapters considers life in a pine wood and the effect of that setting on its human inhabitants.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Hell's Angel

Raoul Whitfield

Raoul Whitfield’s story follows Dantone Marcosson, a man shaped by violent family history, repeated moves, and a volatile temper. Raised across Morocco, Africa, America, and the United States, he drifts through laboring jobs, jails, and the heat of the Pacific borderlands before discovering aviation and the Air Service. The narrative then frames him as a seasoned army captain traveling by transport toward the Philippines, with his military record marked by both skill and disciplinary trouble.

E-Book · Free to read · English

Named right

Andrew A. Caffrey

This short story follows Pilot Rutter, an experienced San Francisco to Reno air mail flier known for never having been lost. He is irritated by the publicity another pilot, Page, receives after getting badly lost, and the story contrasts that notoriety with Rutter’s own workmanlike attitude. When Page cannot fly one morning, Rutter is called in for the run and faces a difficult trip over poor weather and the Sierra.

E-Book · Free to read · English

The Salvation Army in Switzerland

Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler

Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler writes about the conflict surrounding the Salvation Army in Switzerland and the authorities’ response to it. She frames the issue as a struggle over liberty of conscience, justice, and respect for individual rights, especially as these principles were applied to a young English woman associated with the movement. The book also reflects on Switzerland’s political and religious character and Butler’s own long involvement in defending such principles through her work.

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