SPOZZ Books
897 books
E-Book · Free to read · English
Lionel Hipwell, a young London man of good family and political prospects, tells how gambling and a chance night out draw him from an ordinary life into danger. Secretly engaged to Joan Gell, the daughter of his father’s political enemy, he moves between society circles, the Foreign Office, and gaming tables as the night of November 12 begins to shift his fate.
E-Book · Free to read · English
A first-person account of the Russo-Japanese War follows a newspaper man sent incognito through Russia, Siberia, Manchuria, and toward Peking to gather information for his paper. The book describes his experiences in Port Arthur and elsewhere in Manchuria and the Far East, along with the uneasy overlap between secret agents, spies, and correspondents during the siege of Port Arthur. It also reflects on censorship, military secrecy, and the role of foreign journalism in the conflict.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Tex Rowland, a cowpuncher serving time as prisoner 1733, is quietly warned by Hump Sherrill, an older trusty from the same cattle country. The story centers on prison suspicion and a possible setup after an attempted escape leaves the prison unsettled, while Tex is summoned to face hard-nosed warden Jim McHague and seems to be in danger himself. The opening builds a tense mystery around why Tex is being blamed and what Hump’s message is meant to prevent.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Set in industrial Lancashire, this novel opens in Narrowfields among working-class households waking before dawn, with the Cherry family at the center. Nan Cherry is introduced as a fierce, outspoken woman whose anger dominates the street and household, while the home itself is crowded, worn, and marked by strain. The passage also suggests a family shaped by labor, dogs, and rough domestic tension, with a mixture of harshness and dark humor.
E-Book · Free to read · English
The story follows the High Collar Kid, a seasoned underworld operator with sharp instincts, as he drives through a rain-soaked city and senses he may be under observation. When he spots a lone young woman walking along the highway, he slows and then pulls off onto a side road, waiting with his automatic ready to see whether the situation is a trap or a chance encounter. The tense setup centers on his caution, pursuit, and uncertainty in the storm.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Kendall, a weary schoolmaster recovering from illness, boards at a Southwest ranch run by Mrs. Brownlie and her children. Expecting the color of Western romance, he instead sees hard, repetitive labor, meager comforts, and a household worn down by poverty and neglect. He notices especially the strained mother, the overworked boys, and Lily, a delicately dressed child kept away from chores.
E-Book · Free to read · English
This Western short story follows Thad Sowers, a broncho buster with the John O’Day Traveling Rodeo Circus, who keeps wearing an old yellow silk shirt despite his boss’s complaints. John O’Day wants him to replace it before the afternoon performance in Colorado, but Thad’s attachment to the shirt is tied up with his feelings about June O’Day, the owner’s daughter. The story centers on the tension between Thad, his employer, and the rodeo setting as the show prepares to go on.
E-Book · Free to read · English
A drifting cowboy at the Arrow Springs cow-camp loses his buckskin horse after hearing shots in the night and follows the tracks of the thief. His search leads him into the hands of a sheriff’s party that mistakes him for a wanted man connected to a bank robbery and murder, relying on his appearance, his horse, and the trail against him. The story follows his arrest and uneasy escort toward town as he tries to explain where he was and why he is on the trail.
E-Book · Free to read · English
This Western short story follows Chuck Warner as he hauls the Cross J mail, grumbles about mail-order catalogs, and brings letters back to the ranch. His conversations with the postmaster and Doc Milliken center on ranch foreman J. B. Whittaker, who is overworked, short of a cook, and urged toward marriage by a blunt letter. The ranch’s hard cooking, the men’s banter, and Chuck’s meddling in J. B.’s correspondence drive the situation.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Set in New York and a coastal estate, the story follows a young woman whose beauty is marked by deep suffering and a desperate resolve. On a wild winter night, she enters a drug store seeking laudanum, and the clerk watches in horror as she takes the poison and vanishes into the dark streets. The narrative then turns back to her earlier life, showing her on a gray shore waiting again for a ship that never arrives, accompanied only by her loyal Newfoundland dog.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Set in medieval Buckinghamshire, this book opens with a vivid account of the county’s roads, castles, abbeys, pilgrims, and religious life. It then turns to a nunnery at Maids Moreton, where the sisters follow a strict routine of prayer, reading, gardening, and household work under their abbess. Their quiet order is interrupted when a manciple announces a young pilgrim at the gate, prompting discussion about whether he should be admitted for food and shelter.
E-Book · Free to read · English
Morley Smith is a middle-aged clubman in New York whose comfortable, sheltered life leaves him restless for excitement. After a first improvised adventure had given him a taste for danger, he follows that impulse again one drizzly night and takes a taxi to the East Side. There he enters a tenement, where a young, tearful girl mistakes him for an undertaker and the situation becomes awkwardly uncertain.
E-Book · Free to read · English
A narrator decides to move where he can keep a couple of horses, but horse sellers quickly turn up with all kinds of animals and claims about their value. After testing several, he eventually buys one that seems perfect, only to discover it is a violent wrecking horse that damages his stable and neighboring property. The story follows his attempts to manage the animal while other horse offers continue to arrive.
E-Book · Free to read · English
This book presents English renderings of Petrarch’s sonnets, with attention to the Tuscan language that made his work central to Italian literary history. It reflects on the difficulty of translating his compact verse into English and on the poet’s sincerity of feeling. The poems are also discussed through the figure of Laura, whose beauty, silence, death, and the dream-like conventions of the love sequence shape Petrarch’s long devotion.
E-Book · Free to read · English
This volume presents a travel narrative compiled from letters and journals, describing journeys from the Hebrides to India and the Himalayas. The author contrasts common British ideas of India with her own experience of prolonged travel, little discomfort, and varied scenery, while also noting memories of Scottish places such as Skye and the Mull of Cantyre. It is framed as a collection of wandering impressions and observations rather than a tightly connected account.
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