To The Last Man  --  It was Wordsworth who wrote, "The world is too much with us"; and if I could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it would be contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has always come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how the world is too much with them. Getting and spending they lay waste their powers, with never a breath of the free and wonderful life of the open!

What happens when a family suddenly gets enough money to play with and probably won't have to pay it back? That word "probably" really throws the brakes on, doesn't it?  Or, does it?

The Way Of All Flesh

The Venus From Moscow  by Pushkin.  A very nice, almost mystical short romance from Paris where everybody still cuddles. Elizabeth is a penniless but sweet young thing living with a mean-spirited but wealthy old Russian Countess.  One day Elizabeth glances out her window and there on the street below is this handsome young officer in the Engineers corp. Naturally, Elizabeth shrinks back from the window and clutches at her heart.  Here it is, just like it happens in the Russian romance novels - and she is stricken with love, on the spot. "He is in love with me and hoping to get my attention by posting himself there on my Parisian street corner. The swirling snow is turning his lips almost blue on this bitterly cold afternoon, that he ignores because the heat of his passion is keeping his feet and his heart warm. Elizabeth nearly swoons again. Well, I won't ruin the story for you. Download this novel and read it for yourself, but I will tell you that with Pushkin at the author's throttle you can look in a dozen mirrors and never know who is the fairest one of them all until the last snowflake melts.

Meadows and Myst: Where do thoughts go at the end of day? Do they dance through the meadows and climb to the stars on the evening myst? And what if someone steals them before they leave, someone snuggling close to you, someone fascinated, ravenously fascinated with every word you say? Can you break the bond set that night? Can you make yourself stay away? When a poet turns his fancy to writing a novel it turns into the story of a playwright composing a play and a sculptor composing songs. One can naturally expect daylight shadows to give forth radiant butterflies, but then ladies of darkness leap across the stage of time and the poet sees his play being read from the lips of the greatest novelist of the century --word for word, his own, right up to the thrilling end. Can he find his way back to the island and wind his way through the bright meadows and the evening's thickening myst? For Life has kissed me full upon the lips as it paused in fleeting by, but I left no impression there, nor am I myst.

Rummy-Go  Rummy-Go is an archaic expression used to signify a state of bewilderment. In this short romance mystery an English duke is confronted with the kidnaping of his beloved wife and struggles valiantly to keep her alive without paying a vast sum for her release.
The modern, suspicious reader wonders all the way through just how many close friends were involved in the abduction and taking a cut in the ransom --
Rummy-Go is a short romance, perhaps a mystery, and definitely a good piece of humor that you will just know may be cut short in tragedy at any second. Don't miss this

Dreams and Blushes by Mary Hastings Bradley.  Maria had never been kissed before.  She was an innocent from abroad and she fell head over heels in love with the very first American boy she met.  But, what would Mamma say if Mamma knew she had spent a whole night with a boy, alone all night with a boy and she had been kissed, not just once, but several times? 
Men did not ask for dower settlements in America. They could please themselves and marry a pretty, penniless face. . . . Besides, what was saved on Maria's dowry would plump out Julietta's. 
America. . . . A husband. . . . Travel. . . . Adventure. . . . The unknown. . . . It was wonderful. It was unbelievable. . . . It was also likely to be quite desperate. It was, in fact, a hazard of the sharpest chance. She did not know the ways over there! That knowledge brought a chill of gravity into the hot currents of her fluttering heart—a chill that was the cold breath of a terrific responsibility. She felt herself to be the sole hope, the sole resource of her family. Maria was the die on which their throw of fortune was to be cast.  She MUST get a husband, and FAST! 
How could an innocent from abroad do that in an America where flappers could both come and go; where the competition set no limits of any kind?

Flaming Forests is a free romance novel set early in the last century.  A top manhunter mountie is shot by mistake and his murderess works to save his life, certain that if he lives the mountie will march her off to 20 years in prison.  The mountie falls in love with his nurse, and he is willing to forgive and forget -- until he discovers she is married to the very man he is hunting down as a vicious killer.  A superb thriller as well as a great romance.  You'll find the book stashed behind your entersanctum gate.

Shadows of Illinois.  Young John Wayland went into the wilderness of Illinois on a mission to bring a young orphan girl back from Fort Dearborn to live with his family.  Soon he found himself torn between duty and love on a wild frontier.  Would he save the girl he came after, or the woman he had fallen helplessly in love with along with the dashing French Captain that she adored?

Frontier Intrigue: 

Gift of the Iroquois:  The next moment I had pushed in among them, forcing the hilarious circle to open; and I heard her quick, uneven breathing as I elbowed my way to her, and turned on the men good-humoredly.
"Come, boys, be off!" I said. "Leave rough sport to the lower party. She's sobbing." I glanced at her. "Why, she's but a child, after all! Can't you see, boys? Now, off with you all in a hurry!"

Beth Norvell:  Winston was by nature a gentleman; almost before he had grasped the full significance of it all he stepped silently backward, and gently closed the door. For an uncertain moment he remained there staring blankly at the wood between him and the lovely vision, that haunting memory once again mocking every vain attempt to associate this girl-face with some other he had known before. Finally, leaving valise and overcoat lying in the hall, he retraced his way slowly down the stairs.
"Tom," and the young man leaned against the rough counter, his voice grown graver, "there chances to be a woman at present occupying that room you just assigned me."  Pick up your copy 

Margaret Tudor  When I began this tale of our captivity it was with the hope that I might find some means of sending it to friends, in this country or in England, who would interest themselves in obtaining our release. However, from what Mr. Collins told me, I feel assured that news of Mr. Rivers's capture has already been sent to their Lordships the proprietors, and this record of mine seems now but wasted labour. Yet from time to time, for my own solace, I shall add to it; and perchance, some day in safety and freedom, I and -- -- another -- -- may together read its tear-stained pages.
This day I have completed the seventeenth year of my age. It is a double anniversary, for one year ago this night -- it being the eve of our departure from England -- I first set eyes upon my dear love.

It was in the early days of the Great World War that saw Sara Lee playing her part, first in the setting of a city in Pennsylvania. An old city and an ugly city, but still a wealthy one. It is only fair to Sara Lee if we say that she shared in neither quality. She was far from ugly, and very, very far from the safe crib of wealth.
She had started her part with a full stage, to carry on the figure, but one by one they had gone away into the wings and had not come back. At nineteen she was alone knitting by the fire, the fire that struggled to go out, with no idea whatever that the back drop was of painted net, and that beyond it, waiting for its moment, was the forest of adventure and the shadows of romance.  

A Knight of the Wilderness  Abe and Ann are matched again in this romance of the western frontier.  Set in the Blackhawk war time frame you'll find Abe already setting out on the trail that leads to greatness in the eyes of all that know him.  Ann is a prize any man might wish to win.

The Romance of Tristan & Iseult Drawn from the best French Sources and Retold by J. Bédier Rendered into English by H. Belloc

The Tinted Venus  What do you do when Venus comes to life and will marry no one, only you?  Our young hairdresser wishes to run for his life.  This is a complete, full sized book.   

Here is A Dashing Romance on the planet Mars  Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain old prosaic lieutenant in the Republican Service have done all these incredible things here set forth, and done them for the love of a woman -- No, not for a woman, for a mere chimera in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of a real woman's loveliness? I know you will laugh if I simply give you the summary of my travails.
I know that you would hastily cast me aside as a fabricator; an unpolished liar, and I pause and deign to quit, and then I sigh again and pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write this story and give it to the world – I am constrained to share the pallid splendor of that thing I loved, and won, and lost, and that is ever before me, and will not be forgotten or shunted aside. 

Marie Claire: is another one of the free "page-turning"  books furnished us by Browzer Books.  Back in its day of publication this was all the rage in England and France for six long years. 
Here is a teaser.. My father often took us to a place where there were men who drank wine. He used to put me on a table among the glasses, and make me sing. The men would laugh and kiss me, and try and make me drink wine. It was always dark when we went home. My father took long steps, and rocked himself as he walked. He nearly tumbled down lots of times. Sometimes he would begin to cry and say that his house had been stolen. Then my sister used to scream. It was always she who used to find the house. One morning la mère Colas got angry with us and told us that we were children of misfortune, and that she would not feed us any longer. She said we could go and look for our father, who had gone away nobody knew where. When her anger had passed she gave us our breakfasts as usual, but a few days afterwards we were put into père Chicon's cart. The cart was full of straw and bags of corn. I was tucked away behind in a little hollow between the sacks. The cart tipped down at the back, and every jolt made me slip on the straw.