Books published by publisher Doubleday Page and Company

"Domingo" the burro the Hollisters were given for a pet the last time they were out West is the innocent means by which the Hollisters once again find themselves following the mystery trail on horseback. Because of a near accident the Hollister children meet and befriend the Blairs who are from Nevada. They learn that Mr. Blair is trying to sell some of his property on the Tumbling K Ranch, but strange and eerie events have discouraged prospective buyers. Naturally, the minute the Hollisters hear mystery is involved they are eager to be in the thick of it. Their interest is further aroused when a prowler is discovered spying on them in Shoreham. What excitement there is then, when they are invited to visit the Blairs and help them solve this baffling problem. Who is the strange and evil looking man who tries to cause the trouble for the Hollisters on their trip to Nevada? And who is the tall lanky cowboy, Dakota Dawson, whose actions are so suspicious? And are the strange lights seen on the mountain man-made or some odd trick of nature? The Happy Hollisters find fun, adventure, danger and the answer to the many questions posed by the mystery surrounding the Tumbling K Ranch.

In this story I have endeavoured to realize some of the influences that surrounded the youth of America a hundred years ago, and made of them, first, good citizens, and, later, in the day of peril, heroes that won the battles of Lake Erie, Plattsburg, and New Orleans, and the great sea fights of Porter, Bainbridge, Decatur, Lawrence, Perry, and MacDonough. Includes over two hundred drawings.

van Lyon was a career soldier in the British Army who was bored by routine military life. Once he proved it by having a massive, ferocious tiger tattoed on his chest. Later, after he had escaped from Singapore in 1942, a purpose in life came to him. It was to repay the Japanese for their cruelty in the Malayan Campaign. He did it well. Organizing an irregular force he returned to Singapore in 1943 in small boats, placing mines on anchored shipping. Seven vessels went down. A year later he tried again with small ""canoe"" submarines, but was discovered and killed. The men with him were executed, but not before two of them had managed to cover 2000 miles in a small open boat in an escape attempt. The story is told sparely, in good taste, and yet with not too much attempt to understand Lyon the ""tiger"". Details of both raids, and of the painful trial of the captured men just before the close of the War, add colorful history to the writing done about the Pacific conflict.

Example in this ebookCHAPTER IAll her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for their soul’s good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her connections should seek salvation according to her own lights; and, with harsh tongue and with bitter gibe, made it her constant business to persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but even the inner thought of those about her: the Last Judgment could have no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would meet due testamentary reward.Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits—for, in a way, the old lady was very hospitable—she made it her especial object to break the spirit of her guests; and it entertained her hugely to see the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or in obliging them to do things which they particularly disliked. With a singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blind invective till the sufferer writhed before her, raw and bleeding: no defect, physical or mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet, with all her heart, she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard, with unconcealed hilarity, their unwilling and confused suggestions.With one of her relations only, Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe a certain restraint, for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had, besides, a far keener wit whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit; she looked upon her in fact with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious: it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claims than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to find some one to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No cherished opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire—even her evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument, was easily driven into self-contradiction; and then—for the victor took no pains to conceal her triumph—she grew pale and speechless with rage.To be continue in this ebook.................................................................................