Serials

Serialized short stories and longer fictional works delivered in convenience-sized packaging. Cliff-hangers abound. Every episode reads in ten minutes or less.

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 6

January 23, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials Tags: marriage, Thomas Hardy, lawyer, disaster, london

Soon Raye wrote about the wedding. Having decided to make the best of what he feared was a piece of romantic folly, he had acquired more zest for the grand experiment. He wished the ceremony to be in London, for greater privacy. Edith Harnham would have preferred it at Melchester; Anna was passive. His reasoning prevailed, and Mrs. Harnham threw herself with mournful zeal into the preparations for Anna’s departure. In a last desperate feeling that she must at every hazard be in at the death of her dream, and see once again the man who by a species of [Read More]

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 5

January 22, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials Tags: lawyer, young love, disaster, public domain stories, Thomas Hardy

The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind. ‘God forgive me!’ he said tremulously. ‘I have been a wicked wretch. I did not know she was such a treasure as this!’ The whole of On the Western Circuit may be found in Hardy’s collection Life’s Little Ironies [Read More]

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 4

January 21, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials Tags: public domain stories, Thomas Hardy, lawyer, young love, disaster

To return now to the moment at which Anna, at Melchester, had received Raye’s letter. It had been put into her own hand by the postman on his morning rounds. She flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and over. ‘It is mine?’ she said. So much in Hardy’s story happens unspoken, kept beneath the surface and out of sight according to the strict social mores of the era. This is so for the characters, who struggle against those rules, and it is so for Hardy himself as he writes around Anna’s situation and [Read More]

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 3

January 18, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials Tags: class, public domain stories, Thomas Hardy, lawyer, young love

The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a few hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither. At the next town after that they did not open till the following Monday, trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon; but it was not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey wig, curled in tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen [Read More]

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 2

January 17, 2019 By Thomas Hardy in Serials Tags: public domain stories, Thomas Hardy, lawyer

The square was overlooked from its remoter corner by the house of which the young girl had spoken, a dignified residence of considerable size, having several windows on each floor. Inside one of these, on the first floor, the apartment being a large drawing-room, sat a lady, in appearance from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. The blinds were still undrawn, and the lady was absently surveying the weird scene without, her cheek resting on her hand. The room was unlit from within, but enough of the glare from the market-place entered it to reveal the lady’s face. She was [Read More]

On the Western Circuit: Chapter 1

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

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 (Pt. 2)

January 14, 2019 By Anton Chekov in Serials Tags: anton chekov, detective stories, mystery, russia, murder, marriage

Part 2 A fortnight passed. It was morning. The magistrate Nicholas Yermolaïyevitch was sitting in his office before a green table, turning over the papers of the “Klausoff case”; Dukovski was striding restlessly up and down like a wolf in a cage. In the second part of Chekov’s story of murder and investigation, the authorities press the suspects to confess and follow the trail to an unlikely co-conspirator. Read more tales like this in Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Detective Stories, which is available at Project Gutenberg. “You are convinced of the guilt of Nicholas and Psyekoff,” he said, [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 5, Mrs. Brown at Thompson Hall

December 21, 2018 By Anthony Trollope in Serials Tags: Anthony Trollope, christmas stories, public domain stories, christmas

“Please, sir, we were to ask for Mr. Jones,” said the servant, putting his head into the carriage after both Mr. and Mrs. Brown had seated themselves. “Mr. Jones!” exclaimed the husband. “Why ask for Mr. Jones?” demanded the wife. The servant was about to tender some explanation when Mr. Jones stepped up and said that he was Mr. Jones. “We are going to Thompson Hall,” said the lady with great vigor. The week with Anthony Trollope’s Christmas at Thompson Hall concludes as the Browns and Mr Jones (“Barnaby Jones?” Mrs Brown wonders) arrive at Thompson Hall Christmas morning. This [Read More]

Christmas at Thompson Hall: Chapter 4, Mrs. Brown Does Escape

December 20, 2018 By Anthony Trollope in Serials Tags: old stories, public domain stories, christmas, Anthony Trollope, travel, classic fiction

It had been visible to Mrs. Brown from the first moment of her arrival on the ground floor that “something was the matter,” if we may be allowed to use such a phrase; and she felt all but convinced that this something had reference to her. She fancied that the people of the hotel were looking at her as she swallowed, or tried to swallow, her coffee. When her husband was paying the bill there was something disagreeable in the eye of the man who was taking the money. Her sufferings were very great, and no one sympathized with her. [Read More]

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