Gems (?) of German Thought

Ecclesiastical Curiosities by Various

Le Tour du Monde; d'Alexandrette au coude de l'Euphrate by Various

It was a grand success. Every one said so; and moreover, every one who witnessed the experiment predicted that the Mermaid would revolutionize naval warfare as completely as did the world-famous Monitor. Professor Rivers, who had devoted the best years of his life to perfecting his wonderful invention, struggling bravely on through innumerable disappointments and failures, undaunted by the sneers of those who scoffed, or the significant pity of his friends, was so overcome by his signal triumph that he fled from the congratulations of those who sought to do him honour, leaving to his young assistants the responsibility of restoring the marvellous craft to her berth in the great ship-house that had witnessed her construction. These assistants were two lads, eighteen and nineteen years of age, who were not only the Professor's most promising pupils, but his firm friends and ardent admirers. The younger, Carlos West Moranza, was the only son of a Cuban sugar-planter, and an American mother who had died while he was still too young to remember her. From earliest childhood he had exhibited so great a taste for machinery that, when he was sixteen, his father had sent him to the United States to be educated as a mechanical engineer in one of the best technical schools of that country. There his dearest chum was his class-mate, Carl Baldwin, son of the famous American shipbuilder, John Baldwin, and heir to the latter's vast fortune. The elder Baldwin had founded the school in which his own son was now being educated, and placed at its head his life-long friend, Professor Alpheus Rivers, who, upon his patron's death, had also become Carl's sole guardian. In appearance and disposition young Baldwin was the exact opposite of Carlos Moranza, and it was this as well as the similarity of their names that had first attracted the lads to each other. While the young Cuban was a handsome fellow, slight of figure, with a clear olive complexion, impulsive and rash almost to recklessness, the other was a typical Anglo-Saxon American, big, fair, and blue-eyed, rugged in feature, and slow to act, but clinging with bulldog tenacity to any idea or plan that met with his favour. He invariably addressed his chum as "West," while the latter generally called him "Carol."

Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) by Various

Embracing a Flash-Light Sketch of the Holocaust, Detailed Narratives by Participants in the Horror, Heroic Work of Rescuers, Reports of the Building Experts as to the Responsibility for the Wholesale Slaughter of Women and Children, Memorable Fires of the Past, etc., etc.

Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) by Various

He saved her. He was her fated mate. Her king and her protector. Until a single ritual shattered everything. Now she's a Lycan queen with no memory of loving him... And all she feels is hatred. Will his obsession bring her back... or destroy them both?

Alexander's coldness was laid bare before Florrie; he even asked her to buy morning-after pills for another woman. Enduring the pain became her routine, all because Alexander was a stand-in for Alec, her lost love. But one day, she tricked him into signing the divorce papers and said, "I never loved you." Devastation clung to him, his gaze clouded by despair. "You can't leave. I won't sign." Then Alec returned as a conglomerate heir. She searched his face for love and found none-until she turned away. He cracked, tears falling. "I'm sorry," he begged. "I love you."

After seven years in a dungeon for a crime I didn't commit, my fated mate, the Alpha who let them drag me away, finally opened my cell door. He announced I would take my place as his Luna, not out of love, but because the law demanded it. But the moment a frantic mind-link came through that his precious Seraphina-my adopted sister, the one who framed me-was having trouble breathing, he abandoned me without a second glance. That night, huddled in a dusty shack, I overheard my own parents' secret conversation. They were planning to have me exiled. Permanently. My return had upset Seraphina, and her "weak heart" couldn't take the shock. I lay there in the darkness, feeling nothing. Not surprise. Not even pain. Just a profound, empty coldness. They were casting me out. Again. But as they plotted my exile, a secret message arrived for me-an offer of escape. A new life in a sanctuary far to the north, where I could leave the Blackmoon Pack behind forever. They thought they were getting rid of me. Little did they know, I was already gone.

Joelle thought she could change Adrian's heart after three years of marriage, but she realized too late that it already belonged to another woman. "Give me a baby, and I'll set you free." The day Joelle went into labor, Adrian was traveling with his mistress on his private jet. "I don't care whom you love. My debt is paid. From now on, we have nothing to do with each other." Not long after Joelle left, Adrian found himself begging on his knees. "Please come back to me."

"Lucien, let's get a divorce," I said in a peremptory tone that was long overdue, the most decisive farewell to this absurd marriage. We had been married for exactly three years-three years that, for me, were filled with nothing but endless loneliness and torment. For three years, the husband who should have stood by my side through every storm, Lucien Sullivan, had completely disappeared from my life as if he had never existed. He vanished without a trace, leaving me alone to endure this empty, desolate marriage. Today, I finally received his message: "I'm back. Come pick me up at the airport." When I read his words, my heart leapt with joy, and I raced to the airport, thinking that he finally understood my love and was coming back to me. But his cruelty was far worse than I could have ever imagined-he was accompanied by a pregnant woman, and that woman was Carla, my closest and most trusted friend. In that moment, all of my previous excitement, all my hope, and all of our shared laughter and tears turned into the sharpest of daggers, stabbing into my heart and leaving me gasping for air. Now, all I want is to escape from this place that has left me so broken-to lick my wounds in solitude. Even if these wounds will remain with me for the rest of my life, I refuse to have anything to do with him ever again. He should know that it was his own hand that trampled our love underfoot, that his coldness and betrayal created this irreparable situation. But when he heard those words, he desperately clung to this broken, crumbling marriage, unwilling to let it end-almost as though doing so could rewind time and return everything to how it used to be. "Aurora, come back. I regret everything!" Regret? Those simple words stirred no emotion in me-only endless sadness and fury. My heart let out a frantic, desperate scream: It's too late for any of this!

Kaelen was supposed to be my destiny. The future Alpha of our pack, my childhood love, and my fated mate. But one night, I smelled another woman on him-a sickly sweet Omega scent I knew all too well. I followed him and found them under the great oak, locked in a lover's kiss. His betrayal was a slow and deliberate poison. When his precious Omega, Lyra, staged a fall, he cradled her like she was made of glass. But when he sabotaged my saddle during a dangerous jump, causing my horse to throw me and break my leg, he called it a "warning" not to touch her. His care for me afterward was just damage control to avoid my father's suspicion. At a public auction, he used my family's money to buy her a priceless diamond, leaving me humiliated and unable to pay. I finally understood what I'd overheard on the pack's mind-link days before. To him and his brothers-in-arms, I was just a "pampered princess," a prize to be won for power. Lyra was the one they truly desired. He thought he could break me, force me to accept being second best. He was wrong. On the night of my 20th birthday, the night I was supposed to be bonded to him, I stood before two packs and made a different choice. I rejected him and announced my union with a rival Alpha, a man who sees me as a queen, not a consolation prize.