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1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 10 of 31.
Boswell's Life of Johnson: Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood
James Boswell
A man of profound intellect and jagged edges, he captures the heart of his century through the sharpest conversations ever recorded. To walk in his company is to witness the sheer force of human character.
Alice, or the Mysteries
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
The shadows of a long-lost past reach out to entangle a young woman’s future, as a man seeks to correct the mistakes of his youth through a final, perilous act of atonement.
The Satyricon
Petronius Arbiter
A world of shifting masks and desperate appetites awaits, where honor is a commodity, survival is a performance, and the only certainty is the next meal or the next betrayal.
The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
A young musical prodigy navigates the aristocratic courts of Europe, capturing in hurried, vivid prose both the triumphs of his genius and the crushing weight of professional expectation.
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
The ancient walls of a crumbling castle hold secrets of blood, a giant’s armor, and a cursed lineage that demands a terrible reckoning from those who dare to claim a stolen crown.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Thomas De Quincey
A young scholar flees the confines of his English school to wander the streets of London, where he discovers a chemical key to both paradise and the most terrifying depths of human imagination.
Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de
A silent observer at the heart of the world’s most opulent court tracks the slow, inevitable decline of a sun king and the chaotic scramble for power that follows.
Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
A voice from the soil, singing for the common heart, captures the wild rhythm of a life lived in defiance of both frozen winters and the stifling reach of cold-hearted authority.
My Bondage and My Freedom
Frederick Douglass
The man who once belonged to another now claims his own voice, transforming the brutal experience of bondage into a searing, eloquent demand for the dignity of all human beings.
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, Complete: Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan, First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
Mme. (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette) Campan
The crown of France, once the sun around which all of Europe orbited, gradually darkens as a young, ill-prepared couple finds themselves at the epicenter of a world tearing itself apart.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A cyclone carries a girl from the Kansas prairies to a vibrant, perilous realm where the only path home is paved with yellow brick and guarded by a mysterious, distant ruler.
Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
Austin Craig
A scholar and physician, one man’s quiet dedication to the truth ignited a movement that reshaped a nation’s destiny. His life serves as a bridge between the fading shadows of medieval rule and the dawn of modern democratic self-governance.
The secret of Father Brown
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
The small, unassuming priest with the brolly may look like a caricature of helplessness, but he sees the darkness in the human heart better than any policeman. Behind his mild eyes lies a profound understanding of what makes a man a criminal—or a saint.
Daughters of Nijo: A Romance of Japan
Onoto Watanna
In the high-walled seclusion of Nijo Palace, a bored and isolated princess finds her double in a commoner’s daughter, igniting a dangerous game of identities that threatens to upend their lives and the rigid order of Japan.
From the Earth to the moon
Jules Verne
The earth is a cage, but the stars are a destination; this is the story of how a group of artillerymen decided to stop aiming at their enemies and start aiming at the heavens.
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
The ocean is a vast, indifferent mirror. Look long enough into its depths, and you will find your own soul staring back, or perhaps a monster of your own making.
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
Sarah H. (Sarah Hopkins) Bradford
A woman born into the night of slavery rises to become a legend, risking her life repeatedly to lead others toward the morning of freedom.
A Love Story
William Harvey Christie
A wandering spirit seeks, through loss and distance, the quiet harbor of home, finding that the heart’s deepest attachments are often forged in the embers of grief and the soft, fleeting light of memory.
A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
Charles Reade
A woman’s desperate, secret choice to protect her husband’s legacy from a spiteful rival leads to a lifetime of shadowed consequences. How far would you go to secure the happiness of the person you love most?
The Vision of Desire
Margaret Pedler
The path to happiness is rarely a straight line, especially when shadows of the past and the thorns of misunderstanding threaten to choke the garden of one's deepest hopes.
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Jules Verne
The vast, uncharted heart of Africa waits for no one—unless you happen to be floating five thousand feet above it in a balloon of your own design.
The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
Franklin K. Lane
A young lawyer from the American West rises to the heart of the federal government, only to find the machinery of democracy often clogs with the very idealism he sought to serve.
Fifty years in Wall Street
Henry Clews
A veteran financier chronicles fifty years of American market history, blending practical wisdom with the raw, unfiltered lessons learned from the high-stakes collapses and booms of a rapidly industrializing nation.
The Small House at Allington
Anthony Trollope
A quiet village life is shattered when a man’s hollow heart ruins a young woman’s future, leaving her to find a path through the wreckage of broken promises and the enduring, silent devotion of a friend.
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Honoré de Balzac
In the shadow of a crumbling, centuries-old house in the Rue Saint-Denis, a young painter finds his muse, only to discover that the most delicate flowers of the valley often wither when forced to bloom in the thin, scorching air of genius.
Thelma
Marie Corelli
A daughter of the midnight sun, raised in the untamed wilds of Norway, finds her life—and her heart—irreversibly altered by the arrival of a stranger from a world of gilded shadows.
Society as I Have Found It
Ward McAllister
To live well is to master the art of being seen while meticulously curating the view. This is the chronicle of a man who turned the triviality of the guest list into the architecture of a social empire.
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
To understand the mechanics of power is to study the cold, often brutal, architecture of human ambition.
King Midas: a Romance
Upton Sinclair
In the rural quiet of a small town, young Helen Davis feels the stirrings of a grand, unearthly destiny, unaware that the pursuit of such "fiery gold" will demand the near-destruction of everyone she loves.
Color Images from Mars Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity
Bob Webster
A digital reconstruction of a distant world, pieced together from raw data to reveal the rusted, cratered surface of Mars in living color.
Love and Life: An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A story of love and trust put to the test, where the soul’s deepest longings face the harsh, cold machinery of eighteenth-century ambition.
The Cardinal's snuff-box
Henry Harland
In the sun-drenched hills of northern Italy, a solitary Englishman and a widowed Duchess play a delicate game of intellectual courtship, separated by the invisible yet formidable walls of social rank and old-world reserve.
The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
The scent of broom and the rustle of summer leaves linger long after the final page, drawing you into a quiet, sun-drenched world where a simple garment becomes the emblem of a life-changing love.
The Hour of the Dragon
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A king who carved his throne from the chaos of a violent life finds himself stripped of his crown, his memory, and his kingdom, forced to climb back from the depths of a nightmare to reclaim his destiny.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1930
Unknown
The future is a sprawling, dangerous laboratory where machines outpace morality and the boundaries of reality are as thin as a fog-drift. Here, the gears of industry grind against the limits of the human spirit.
The mysterious Mr. Quin
Agatha Christie
The drama of human life is rarely found on the stage, but rather in the quiet, desperate moments when a stranger’s chance remark reveals the truth hidden behind a mask.
All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography
Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell
A girl from the Pennsylvania oil fields finds her way into the inner circles of American power, tracing a lifetime of industry, war, and the relentless search for truth.
Herman Melville
Lewis Mumford
A man who once lived among cannibals spends his life charting the invisible borders between the wild freedom of the ocean and the suffocating demands of the parlor, eventually finding an uneasy, quiet peace.
A guide to the history of physical education
Fred Eugene Leonard
The history of human movement is a chronicle of survival, discipline, and the pursuit of an ideal state of being. Through the rise and fall of civilizations, physical training has served as a mirror for the values of every age, evolving from the harsh necessities of the battlefield to the structured refinement of…
The Swiss family Robinson
Johann David Wyss
When a violent storm sweeps a family into the unknown, they find themselves cast upon an uncharted shore with nothing but their faith and their wits.
The Satyricon
Petronius Arbiter
The gods are not just, and the human body is a traitor; to live among the desperate is to find that your own anatomy may be the first thing to fail you.
The eclipse of Russia
Emile Joseph Dillon
A collapse from within defines the end of an empire. Witness the slow, inevitable disintegration of a Tsardom undone by its own internal contradictions, isolated bureaucracy, and a profound psychological chasm between its rulers and its people.
The dogaressas of Venice (the wives of the doges)
Edgcumbe Staley
Behind the golden masks and marble facades of Venice, a hidden power resided in the quiet chambers of the Ducal Palace: the wives of the Doges, whose influence shaped the destiny of the Most Serene Republic.
1066 and all that
Walter Carruthers Sellar
History, as it is commonly understood, is nothing more than what you can manage to remember. This account serves as the final, definitive guide to the English past, stripping away the clutter of dates and facts to leave only the truly memorable.
Main currents in American thought
Vernon Louis Parrington
The American mind is a sprawling, contested landscape, shaped not by immutable genius but by the collision of competing economic interests, religious fervor, and the persistent, unquiet dream of democratic self-governance.
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The ancient Greeks did not merely observe art; they used it to survive the crushing weight of existence. Beneath the calm marble of their statues and the structured grace of their theater lies a primal, terrifying secret.
The People of the Black Circle
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
Conan, a barbarian mercenary, must navigate a treacherous landscape of mountain sorcerers and shifting political loyalties to rescue a kidnapped princess and secure his own destiny as a warlord.
Jane Seton
James Grant
The shadow of the scaffold looms over a kingdom fractured by vengeance, where a nobleman’s obsession threatens to consume the innocent lives caught in his grasp.