Fiction

Serve yourself, your children with the tools that seed intuitive thinking skills, books that challenge and enrich the imagination. Take them back to the time before the mind-controlling television and electronic games to the origins of the ideas that gave birth to these electronic miracles. - BOOKS that fuel the creative processes of the human imagination.

"Picou tells me that he saw the were-wolf only this day se'nnight," said a peasant; "he was down by the hedge of his buckwheat field, and the sun had set, and he was thinking of coming home, when he heard a rustle on the far side of the hedge. He looked over, and there stood the wolf as big as a calf against the horizon, its tongue out, and its eyes glaring like marsh-fires. Mon Dieu! catch me going over the marais to-night. Why, what could two men do if they were attacked by that wolf-fiend?"

This was a forbotten, censored, and raunchy books of the late 1800s. Assailed as 'trash' but one of the most popular books of that generation.

The first edition of "Erewhon" sold in about three weeks; I had not taken moulds, and as the demand was strong, it was set up again immediately. I was complaining once to a friend that though "Erewhon" had met with such a warm reception, my subsequent books had been all of them practically still-born. He said, "You forget one charm that 'Erewhon' had, but which none of your other books can have." I asked what? and was answered, "The sound of a new voice, and of an unknown voice."

This was not the first time he had been broke. On the contrary, during his younger days he had more than once found himself in that condition and had looked upon it as an exciting experience, as a not unpleasant form of adventure. To be strapped in a mining camp, for instance, was no more than a mild embarrassment. But to find oneself thirty-eight years old, friendless and without funds in a city the size of Dallas-well, that was more than an adventure, and it afforded a sort of excitement that he believed he could very well do without.

Apart from the thrilling interest of Aimard's new story, which I herewith offer to English readers, I think it will be accepted with greater satisfaction, as being an historical record of the last great contest in which the North Americans were engaged. As at the present moment everything is eagerly devoured that may tend to throw light on the impending struggle between North and South, I believe that the story of "THE FREEBOOTERS," which is rigorously true in its details, will enable my readers to form a correct opinion of the character of the Southerners.

From Bram Stoker, one of the greatest authors of horror mysteries.