Best of
Fiction

1913

Laddie: A True Blue Story


Gene Stratton-Porter - 1913
    Loosely based on Stratton-Porter's own childhood, Laddie is a double tale—the classic poor-boy/rich-girl romance and the story of a child of nature and her idyllic childhood.

Swann's Way


Marcel Proust - 1913
    But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin brings Proust's masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis's internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way.Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age — satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in its response to the human condition — Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.

The Custom of the Country


Edith Wharton - 1913
    As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted. - Anita Brookner

The Adventure of the Dying Detective


Arthur Conan Doyle - 1913
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Lo, Michael


Grace Livingston Hill - 1913
    Mickey, a young newsboy, saves the life of heiress Starr Endicott by taking a gunman's bullet himself. To show his gratitude, Starr's father sends the boy off to school where he studies law. Then he returns to the inner city to help his friends. Through the years he has held Starr in his heart but refuses to intrude on her life. Suddenly he learns she's in danger--a danger she has unwittingly chosen. Can he save her again? Should he?

Locus Solus


Raymond Roussel - 1913
    One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture representing a naked child; a road-mender's tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which humans can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel's exhibition there hangs a tale - a tale such as only that esteemed genius Roussel could tell. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author's stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity.

In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove, Part 1


Marcel Proust - 1913
    The famous overture to Swann's Way sets down the grand themes that govern In Search of Lost Time: as the narrator recalls his childhood in Paris and Combray, exquisite memories, long since passed—his mother’s good-night kiss, the water lilies on the Vivonne, his love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte—spring vividly into being. In Within a Budding Grove—which won the Prix Goncourt in 1919, bringing the author instant fame—the narrator turns from his childhood recollections and begins to explore the memories of his adolescence. As his affections for Gilberte grow dim, the narrator discovers a new object of attention in the bright-eyed Albertine. Their encounters unfold by the shores of Balbec. One of the great works of Western literature, now in the new definitive French Pleiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin.

The Adventures of Johnny Chuck


Thornton W. Burgess - 1913
    On a whim, he offers Jimmy Skunk his house and then wanders off. Along the way, he gets into a fight with a strange woodchuck and, after a bruising battle, chases the intruder off. At that point, Johnny is feeling rather unconquerable — that is, until Polly Chuck uses her feminine charms to capture his heart. Before long, the two are happily keeping house in a burrow in the old orchard.Thornton W. Burgess, the author of many delightful classics for children, draws young readers into a timeless world of woodland creatures, teaching children important lessons about nature by basing the animals' actions and adventures on actual wildlife behavior. Six charming illustrations by Thea Kliros, based on Harrison Cady originals, enhance a story sure to delight young animal and nature lovers.

John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs


Jack London - 1913
    London offers acute generalizations on Barleycorn together with a close narrative of his own drinking career, which was heroic in scale. It is, however, as an exercise in autobiography that his book principally attracts the modern reader. London's life was tragically short but packed with episode and adventure. In John Barleycorn he records his early hardships in Oakland, his experiences as oyster pirate, deep-sea sealer, hobo, Yukon goldminer, student, drop-out, and - ultimately - best-selling author. Long neglected by London partisans (who wish he had never written it) and used against him by critics who would see him as a self-confessed drunk, John Barleycorn deserves to be celebrated for what it is: a classic of American autobiography.

Pollyanna


Eleanor H. Porter - 1913
    Despite a difficult start, Pollyanna's exuberance and positivity affect everyone who meets her, and she spreads joy and love wherever she goes. But when tragedy strikes, Pollyanna finds her optimistic attitude tested, and she must learn to find happiness again.A heartwarming tale that has become one of the most loved children's stories of all time, Eleanor H. Porter's 1913 best-seller—the first in a long series of Pollyanna novels by the author and other writers—is a beautiful story with a powerful moral message.

The Valley of the Moon


Jack London - 1913
    A road novel 50 years before Kerouac, The Valley of the Moon traces the odyssey of Billy and Saxon Roberts from the labor strife of Oakland at the turn of the century through central and northern California in search of beautiful land they can farm independently.

The Fairy of the Snows


Francis J. Finn - 1913
    The virtues to imitate are applicable to all. It also contains human behavioral lessons. It brings out the importance of family bonding and loyalty. The writer has a real talent for keeping what could be a very depressing story to light and cheerful reading instead. This is a classic to be handed down for generations. Summary: This is a heart warming story of Alice Morrow, a delightful girl whose cheerfulness and outward actions disguise the real sufferings which the child and her family endure in their frequent state of poverty. Fr. Carney and his crew of philanthropists, headed by Margaret Dalton, come to the rescue of this family, namely, the Fairy of the Snows (as Father calls Alice), her sisters Elsie and Margaret, Frank her younger brother and, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Morrow, their loving parents. Alice captures the heart of the reader just as she does Fr. Carney when he meets her for the first time. She hops and skips like a fairy out of a pantomime, and is dressed as though she were about to appear in Midsummer Nights Dream. says Fr. Carney about Alice. The ultimate optimist, Alice anticipates with great expectations the promises made to her by Mr. Morrow who plans to make good his word just as soon as his ship comes in which he realistically calls the Good Ship Hardly Ever with Captain Romance sailing her in. Our Fairy of the Snows with all her zeal for life and her deep appreciation for music, dance and plays cant be bothered with self-pity. She also wins high honors for her school by her typing skills and unwittingly surprises Mr. Lawson with her literary knowledge. A new release from the foremost Catholic writer of fiction for young people, Fr. Finn. Back in print after 75 years, this book provides a wondrous world full of exciting people and great adventure for all boys and girls.

Jean Barois


Roger Martin du Gard - 1913
    Jean Barois looks back at the “liberated” figures of bygone France and tries to find his own freedom, but when he chooses to give up his ideals for comfort, it results in his dramatic fall from grace.

Cheerful, by Request by Edna Ferber, Fiction, Short Stories


Edna Ferber - 1913
    He lighted his seventh cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of business."Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express that which is in his -- ah -- heart. But in the last year we've been swamped with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could -- that is -- would you -- do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. Not pink, but not all grey either. Say -- mauve. . . ."That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. Which makes mauve. . . .*Also included in this volume are "The Gay Old Dog," "The Tough Guy," "The Eldest," "That's Marriage," "The Woman Who Tried to Be Good," "The Girl Who Went Right," "The Hooker-Up-the-Back," "The Guiding Miss Gowd," "Sophy-as-She-Might-Have-Been," "The Three of Them," and "Shore Leave."

Roughing It, Part 1.


Mark Twain - 1913
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Petersburg


Andrei Bely - 1913
    History, culture, and politics are blended and juxtaposed; weather reports, current news, fashions and psychology jostle together with people from Petersburg society in an exhilarating search for the identity of a city and, ultimately, Russia itself. 'The one novel that sums up the whole of Russia.'—Anthony Burgess

An Unknown Lover


Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey - 1913
    “Was she beautiful? Was she merely pretty? Was she redeemed from plainness only by a certain quality of interest and charm? At different times an affirmative answer might have been given to each of the three questions in turns; at the moment Katrine Beverley appeared just a tall, graceful girl who arranged her hair with a fine eye for the exigencies of an irregular profile, and who deserved an order of merit for choosing a dress at once so simple, so artistic, and so becoming.

The Call of the Cumberlands


Charles Neville Buck - 1913
    the evil glint in Tamarack's blood-shot eyes. He took one slow step forward, and held out his arms. "Will ye come ter me?" he commanded, "or shall I come an' git ye?" The girl's fingers at that instant fell against something cooling and metallic. It was Samson's rifle. With a sudden cry of restored confidence and a dangerous up-leaping of light in her eyes, she seized and cocked it. CHAPTER XVI The girl stepped forward, and held the weapon finger on trigger, close to her cousin's chest. "Ye lies, Tam'rack," she said, in a very low and steady voice-a voice that could not be mistaken, a voice relentlessly resolute and purposeful. "Ye lies like ye always lies. Yore heart's black an' dirty. Ye're a murderer an' a coward. Samson's a-comin' back ter me.... I'm a-goin' ter be Samson's wife." The tensity of her earnestness might have told a subtler psychologist than Tamarack that she was endeavoring to convince herself. "He hain't never run away. He's hyar in this room right now." The mountaineer started, and cast an apprehensive glance about him. The girl laughed, with a deeply bitter note, then she went on: "Oh, you can't see him, Tam'rack. Ye mout hunt all night, but wharever I be, Samson's thar, too. I hain't nothin' but a part of Samson-an' I'm mighty nigh ter killin' ye this minute-he'd do hit, I reckon." "Come on now, Sally," urged the man, ingratiatingly. He was thoroughly cowed, seeking compromise. A fool woman with a gun: every one knew it was a dangerous combination, and, except for himself, no South had ever been a coward. He knew a certain glitter in their eyes. He knew it was apt to presage death, and this girl, trembling in her knees but holding that muzzle against his chest so unwaveringly, as steady as granite, had it in her pupils. Her voice held an inexorable monotony suggestive of tolling bells. She was not the Sally he had known before, but a new Sally, acting under a quiet sort of exaltation, capable of anything. He knew that, ...

The Woman Thou Gavest Me


Hall Caine - 1913
    Work from early 20th Century British novelist and playwright who was probably the highest paid novelist of his day.

Desert Gold


Zane Grey - 1913
    Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - A FACE haunted Cameron - a woman's face. It was there in the white heart of the dying campfire; it hung in the shadows that hovered over the flickering light; it drifted in the darkness beyond. This hour, when the day had closed and the lonely desert night set in with its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past - of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be alone to remember. A sound disturbed Cameron's reflections. He bent his head listening. A soft wind fanned the paling embers, blew sparks and white ashes and thin smoke away into the enshrouding circle of blackness. His burro did not appear to be moving about. The quiet split to the cry of a coyote. It rose strange, wild, mournful - not the howl of a prowling upland beast baying the campfire or barking at a lonely prospector, but the wail of a wolf, full-voiced, crying out the meaning of the desert and the night.

Crooked Trails and Straight


William MacLeod Raine - 1913
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Fortitude: Being a True and Faithful Account of the Education of an Adventurer


Hugh Walpole - 1913
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Unwilling Adventurer


R. Austin Freeman - 1913
    For, left to his own inclinations he will tend to let his thoughts turn back to the springtime of his life, when this old and outworn world was a thing newly discovered, its simplest and commonest pleasures as yet unstaled by custom, and its illusions unspoiled by disappointment; when the future loomed far ahead with the uncertain beauty of a mirage, and no weary journeys lay behind. For even when the wheels of life begin to run stiffly through the wear and rust of age, when pleasures have become dull and the future is but an empty coffer wide agape, still memory can raise the ghosts of dead-and-gone delights until they seem to live again and the world is once more young.But I should seem a dull historian if I should fill these pages with an account of my childhood or even of my youth; which, to speak the truth, were as little eventful as those of other country-bred lads, so I shall pass over these early days and come to that period when my misfortunes and adventures began.Yet it is necessary for me shortly to inform the reader as to my condition, that I may not come before him as a complete stranger; for otherwise would much of that which follows be barely intelligible.My father, then, was a Kentish yeoman, or gentleman farmer as they say nowadays, of a good family though of slender means, and a very agreeable and cultivated man, as I have been told. But I have no clear recollection of him, for he died before I was yet five years old, and was followed a few months later by my mother; when, as my high relations would have none of me, I came to live with a kinsman of my mother, Mr Roger Leigh of Shorne, in Kent. And at Shorne I remained up to the time at which this history opens, finding in Mr Leigh and his wife the kindest and most indulgent of parents, and in their daughter Prudence, a loyal and affectionate sister...

Guest the One-Eyed


Gunnar Gunnarsson - 1913
    Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1922. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... deception! Trustful and idealistic--yes, and narrow-minded and unwittingly a hypocrite. A doll, a child, a foolish butterfly thing.... Heavens, how little and mean and stupid, wicked and ridiculous, she had been--she and so many others of her kind. There was her husband, riding ahead... yes... A reaction of regret at her impetuosity came over her. It was a dreadful thing not to love and honour him. Oh, if only he would make it easier; turn round and nod to her kindly, or say a friendly word. She would be loving and forgiving at once. Who could say what troubles were burdening him all the time? And perhaps it was only to spare her that he said nothing. Men were strange in that way; they fancied that a woman suffered less in such estrangement if she did not learn the cause of it. Then--oh, it was incredible! They were at the ford now, and he was riding through the stream without so much as a look behind him.... Well, perhaps there was nothing so strange in that, after all; possibly' it had not occurred to him that she had never forded a stream on horseback in her life; it was only thoughtlessness on his part. But all the same it was a hard struggle to keep her mind in any friendly attitude towards him, or to keep back the fears that would rise to her eyes. She bit her lips, and strove to restrain her feelings. Her horse was already knee deep in the water--and the Hofsa at this part was wide, yet with a fairly strong current. Alma had never ridden through running water before; at first it seemed to her as if the horse had suddenly flung itself sideways against the stream. Instinctively she leaned over herself, farther and farther, against the stream. Ketill, a couple of lengths in front, looked round just as she was about to fall, turned his horse, and seized her a...

Stories Worth Rereading


Various - 1913
    railway system laid down the letter he had just reread three times and turned about in his chair with an expression of extreme annoyance.

Miss Santa Claus of the Pullman


Annie Fellows Johnston - 1913
    With his stubby little shoes drawn up under him, and his soft bobbed hair flapping over his ears every time the rockers tilted forward, he sat all alone in the sitting-room behind the shop, waiting and rocking. It seemed as if everybody at the Junction wanted something that afternoon; thread or buttons or yarn, or the home-made doughnuts which helped out the slim stock of goods in the little notion store which had once been the parlor. And it seemed as if Grandma Neal never would finish waiting on the customers and come back to tell the rest of the story about the Camels and the Star; for no sooner did one person go out than another one came in. He knew by the tinkling of the bell over the front door, every time it opened or shut.

The Vision Splendid


William MacLeod Raine - 1913
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Mark Tidd: His Adventures And Strategies


Clarence Budington Kelland - 1913
    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Lost Road And Other Stories


Richard Harding Davis - 1913
    The author has subtly expressed his opinions on various subjects through characters that are beautifully drawn. An engrossing work where each tale presents a different outlook of life.

The Rainy Day Railroad War


Holman Francis Day - 1913
    In 1889-90 he was managing editor of the publications of the Union Publishing Company, Bangor, Me. He was also editor and proprietor of the Dexter Eastern Gazette, a special writer for the Lewiston (Me. ) Journal, Maine representative of the Boston Herald, and managing editor of the Lewiston Daily Sun. In 1901-04 he was military secretary to Gov. John F. Hill of Maine. His works include Up in Maine (1901), Pine Tree Ballads (1902), Kin O'Ktaadn (1904), Rainy Day Railroad War (1906), The Eagle Badge (1908), King Spruce (1908), The Ramrodders (1910), The Skipper and the Skipped (1911), The Red Lane: A Romance of the Border (1912), The Landloper (1915), Blow the Man Down (1916), Kavanagh's Clare (1917), The Rider of the King Log (1919), All-Wool Morrison (1920), When Egypt Went Broke (1921), and Joan of Arc of the North Woods (1922).