Serial Pilots

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 1

January 16, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials, Serial Pilots Tags: public domain stories, Thomas Hardy, steam circus, carousel, cathedral, lawyer

The man who played the disturbing part in the two quiet lives hereafter depicted—no great man, in any sense, by the way—first had knowledge of them on an October evening, in the city of Melchester. He had been standing in the Close, vainly endeavouring to gain amid the darkness a glimpse of the most homogeneous pile of mediæval architecture in England, which towered and tapered from the damp and level sward in front of him. While he stood the presence of the Cathedral walls was revealed rather by the ear than by the eyes; he could not see them, but [Read More]

The Safety Match

January 11, 2019 By Anton Chekov in Serial Pilots, Serials Tags: anton chekov, detective stories, mystery, vodka

Part 1 On the morning of October 6, 1885, in the office of the Inspector of Police of the second division of S— District, there appeared a respectably dressed young man, who announced that his master, Marcus Ivanovitch Klausoff, a retired officer of the Horse Guards, separated from his wife, had been murdered. While making this announcement the young man was white and terribly agitated. His hands trembled and his eyes were full of terror. Anton Chekov famously advised storytellers that a gun introduced in the first act should go off by the third. Here it’s a safety match, and [Read More]

Christmas at Thompson Hall: Chapter 1, Mrs. Brown’s Success

December 17, 2018 By Anthony Trollope in Serial Pilots, Serials Tags: christmas, Anthony Trollope, travel, paris, public domain stories

Everyone remembers the severity of the Christmas of 187—. I will not designate the year more closely, lest I should enable those who are too curious to investigate the circumstances of this story, and inquire into details which I do not intend to make known. That winter, however, was especially severe, and the cold of the last ten days of December was more felt, I think, in Paris than in any part of England. It may, indeed, be doubted whether there is any town in any country in which thoroughly bad weather is more afflicting than in the French capital. [Read More]

Adventures in Litter Bay: Coheed Stops a Leak

August 6, 2014 By Lars Peterson in Serial Pilots, Serials Tags: coheed, fiction, serials, shore, mcclatchy, adventures in litter bay

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Adventures in Litter Bay

Hitchcock Coheed had earned a private pilot’s license when he was 16 years old, a degree in electrical engineering when he was 22, a contractor’s license (as an electrician) when he was 26, a marriage license at 27 and at 28 he signed on to his bride’s idea to pack up and seek their fortune in California. A year later he washed up in Litter Bay clinging to a beat Toyota pickup and a toolbox full of tools. His lovely bride was somewhere else, scores of miles inland he guessed, but who knew. Fifteen years later, he still has no idea. [Read More]