Excerpt from The Masquerader: A Novel
Two incidents, widely different in chapter yet bound together by results, marked the night of January the twenty-third. On that night the blackest fog within a four years' memory fell upon certain portions of London, and also on that night came the first announcement of the border risings against the Persian government in the province of Khorasan - the announcement that, speculated upon, even smiled at, at the time, assumed such significance in the light of after events.
At eight o'clock the news spread through the House of Commons; but at nine...

Excerpt from The Gambler: A Novel
An eight-mile drive over rain-washed Irish roads in the quick-falling dusk of autumn is an experience trying to the patience, even to the temper, of the average Saxon. Yet James Milbanke made neither comment nor objection as mile after mile of roadway spun away like a ribbon behind him, as the mud rose in showers from the wheels of the old-fashioned trap in which he sat and the half-trained mare between the shafts swerved now to the right, now to the left, her nervous glance caught by the spectral shapes of the blackthorn hedges or the motionless forms of...

Excerpt from The Mystics: A Novel
Of all the sensations to which the human mind is a prey, there is none so powerful in its finality, so chilling in its sense of an impending event as the knowledge that Death - grim, implacable Death - has cast his shadow on a life that custom and circumstance have rendered familiar. Whatever the personal feeling may be - whether dismay, despair, or relief - no man or woman can watch that advancing shadow without a quailing at the heart, an individual shrinking from the terrible, natural mystery that we must all face in turn - each for himself and each...

Excerpt from Max: A Novel
A night journey is essentially a thing of possibilities. To those who count it as mere transit, mere linking of experiences, it is, of course, a commonplace; but to the imaginative, who by gift divine see a picture in every cloud, a story behind every shadow, it suggests romance - romance in the very making.
Such a vessel of inspiration was the powerful north express as it thundered over the sleeping plains of Germany and France on its night journey from Cologne to Paris. A thing of possibilities indeed, with its varying human freight - stolid Teutons,...