PDF Books in Fiction Short Stories
An Art Shop in Greenwich Village
by Ray CummingsIt was a room perhaps thirty feet in length and half as broad. My first impression as I stepped over the threshold was that I had stepped across the world—in one brief instant transported from the bare, ramshackle, tumbledown Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, into the semibarbaric, Levantine splendor of some Musselman ruler. The room was carpeted w..
Tales of the clipper ships
by Cicely Fox SmithCaptain Broughton sat stiffly erect in the opposite corner of the carriage, with its musty aroma of essence-of-funerals—that indescribable blend of new black clothes and moth-balls and damp horsehair and smelling salts and faded flowers. His square hands, cramped into unaccustomed black kid gloves which already showed a white split across the knuck..
The Big Idea
by Ray CummingsJimmy Rand came out of the wash-house that early April morning and took his place in the line of men dressed in their black, greasy mine-clothes. It was a long line—stretching past the power-house, past the big tower where the coal came tumbling down with a great clatter upon the sorting screens and into the waiting railroad flat cars beneath, unti..
The Right Thing
by Ray CummingsThe girl stood quiet in the cabin doorway looking out at the brilliant, frosty night. Over Sugar Loaf the cold, glittering moon shone full; the big fir on its summit stood stark and black against the vivid blue of the star-studded sky behind, like a giant sentinel watching over the silent valley.Below her, at the bottom of the little pass, the wind..
The Laughter of Slim Malone
by Max BrandTime has little to do with reputation in the far West, and accordingly the name of Slim Malone grew old in the region of Appleton, and yet the owner of the name was still young.Appleton was somewhat of a misnomer, for the region had never known anything save imported apples or any other sort of fruit since the time of its birth into the history of ..
The First
by Edward W. LudwigThe city was enchanted. It was a colossal music box blaring forth a thousand chants of victory. It was a rainbow torn down from the sky and poured over the earth. It was a magic nursery through which eager-eyed children swarmed to behold a sparkling new toy.Three spacemen, three conquerors-to-be, sat stiffly in the back seat of a blue-bannered conv..
King of the Hill
by James BlishThat, as we reconstructed it afterwards, is how the SV-1 affair began. It was pure luck, I suppose, that Gascoigne sent his message direct to us. Civilian Intelligence Group is rarely called into an emergency when the emergency is just being born. Usually Washington tries to do the bailing job first. Then, when Washington discovers that the boat is..
The Ghost in the Red Shirt
by B. M. BowerThe proper way to begin this story would be to assure the reader, first of all, that I have never believed in ghosts; that is the way ghost-stories usually begin, I think. Also, I should say that what I am about to relate is perfectly true—but I won’t begin it like that. As a matter of fact, I don’t care much whether you believe me or not, and I al..