A steam- hammer was banging like a two-shilling tart, the sound of a woodpecker ferreting for grubs, offering a fainter, yet no less annoying, counterpoint. He rearranged his morning erection in his sagging underwear and tried to separate the two sounds. The steam-hammer was the thudding hell of ...
Men always lie. Whether deliberately or not, whether for personal gain or for the best of intentions, whether malicious or misguided, sooner or later men lie. Even heroes. Rowena curled as deep into her shearling jacket as she was able, drawing her jodhpur-clad knees up to her chest and blowing i...
He had seen three summers in this hellhole, the heat and stench from the streets rising to fill his dingy room, and was facing his third Christmas, the howling, icy winds rattling the windowpanes, the snow piling up on the sills. He had chosen the area because it was the haunt of many Portuguese ...
I need to know where a person could get one.” “Well, I’ve told you, there aren’t any museums in the vicinity. Exham is a remote town; who needs museums here?” No museums, Lydia thought. No beam hewers. “Except, of course,” Fredrick continued, “the artifacts owned by the college.” Lydia stared. “Y...
asked Gideon. Cockayne continued to peer through the broken window shutter. He said, “Hey, ain’t you supposed to be the Hero of the Empire?” “Don’t get irritable,” said Gideon. Cockayne took a deep breath. “Sorry. The threat of impending death tends to do that to a man.” He turned away from the w...