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1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 11 of 31.
Tales grotesque and curious
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
The shadows of old Japan and the bright, unsparing light of the modern era collide in these brief, haunting glimpses of human frailty. Behind the masks of tradition and the rigid structures of social status, every character hides a secret shame or an desperate, often ridiculous, impulse.
Shadows in Zamboula
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
The city of Zamboula is a place of shadows and secrets, where the law belongs to the ruthless and the night belongs to the hungry. A solitary wanderer discovers that in this sprawling desert outpost, survival requires a blade as sharp as one's wits.
Arrian on coursing
Arrian
The greyhound is a creature defined by a singular elegance, and its history is a long, swift pursuit across the landscape of human civilization. To understand the bond between human and hound is to touch upon an ancient, unspoken pact of speed, companionship, and the wild, open wold.
An historical account of all the voyages round the world, performed by English navigators, vol. 3 of 4
Unknown
In a world of shifting horizons, intrepid explorers brave treacherous seas and unknown shores to map the final frontiers of the globe. This chronicle documents the extraordinary encounters and perils that shaped the Age of Discovery.
The anatomy of revolution
Crane Brinton
Revolutions behave like a fever, following a predictable path from social malaise to violent crisis and eventually toward a cooling-off period. This study treats political upheaval as a natural, observable phenomenon.
Kate Mulhall
Ezra Meeker
The quiet strength of those who blazed the Oregon Trail lives on in this poignant chronicle. It is a story of ordinary people facing the vast, indifferent wilderness with nothing but their own resolve.
The marvellous land of Snergs
E. A. (Edward Augustine) Wyke-Smith
Deep in a hidden corner of the world, two runaway children stumble upon a race of small, mischievous architects and a sprawling, enchanted landscape where ogres, knights, and witches play out their peculiar, low-stakes dramas.
The history of the Norman conquest of England, its causes and its results, Volume 3 (of 6)
Edward A. (Edward Augustus) Freeman
The fate of an empire hinges on a single day of blood and iron, marking the final, irreversible sunset of the ancient English world.
Great rivers of the world
Unknown
The great rivers of our world carry the history of civilizations, etching the landscape with the silent, relentless force of water and time. They are the veins of the earth, connecting distant mountains to the sea.
The cruise of the Nona
Hilaire Belloc
A man takes to the sea in a small boat, leaving the noise of the modern world behind to map the currents of history, politics, and his own conscience.
Shadows in the Moonlight
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
The edge of the world is a dangerous place, but for an outcast woman and a wandering barbarian, it is the only refuge left in a world that sells its own children.
The last dragon
Dan Totheroh
The meadow and the woodlot are the threshold to a world where childhood play becomes startlingly real, proving that a dragon in the nursery is only as impossible as you choose to believe.
Khartoum, and the Blue and White Niles, Vol. 2 (of 2)
George Melly
To travel the ancient, sun-bleached arteries of the Nile is to trade the modern world for a landscape where time is measured not by clocks, but by the slow, grinding patience of the desert.
Only a clod
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
A simple man inherits a fortune, but finds that wealth cannot purchase the one thing he craves: a heart that loves him for himself rather than his riches.
Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
Cynthia Stockley
To find a home for a restless spirit is to risk losing the very thing that makes you whole. This story traces the quiet, desperate struggle of a woman trapped between her past and the man who demands she forget it.
Tales of terror
Dick Donovan
The boundary between the rational world and the encroaching void is thinner than we dare admit. These accounts suggest that when the veil finally tears, the resulting terror is not merely a phantom, but an inescapable inheritance.
Three millions!
Oliver Optic
An inheritance of three million dollars descends upon a quiet community, acting as a catalyst for hidden virtues, secret schemes, and the eventual unmasking of a calculated villain.
The adventures of an ensign
Valentine Williams
The distant, rhythmic pulse of heavy artillery heralds a transformation, turning young men from comfortable London life into fragments of a vast, unfeeling military machine.
Body-build and its inheritance
Charles Benedict Davenport
Genetic blueprints dictate the physical contours of our lives, from the fragile frame of youth to the solid, inevitable weight of middle age. Discover the biological patterns that link generations through the architecture of the human body.
The black pearl
Marie Lion
In the vast, sun-drenched silence of the Australian bush, a young French woman discovers that the deepest mysteries of the heart are not found in the modern world, but in the echoes of lives lived long ago.
The dream detective
Sax Rohmer
When a series of impossible crimes baffle the authorities, a man who solves cases by sleeping on the scene of the mystery is the only one who can uncover the truth.
Field Artillery Training. 1914
Great Britain. War Office
Professionalism, precision, and the mastery of mechanical power define the modern battlefield. This manual captures the rigorous discipline required to transform raw recruits into a cohesive, lethal artillery force.
Præraphaelite diaries and letters
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
A circle of young, hungry artists stares down the rigidity of the Victorian art world, documenting their own triumphs and unraveling in the process.
The loot of the Lazy A
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A stranger in a rain-slicked city finds himself caught in a web of impersonation and violence, leading him into the heart of a bitter, long-standing range war where the truth is the most dangerous commodity of all.
Bushy
Cynthia May Westover Alden
The childhood of a girl in the rugged Rockies is a raw, perilous education, where the line between a nursery tale and a fight for survival vanishes entirely.
Khartoum, and the Blue and White Niles, Vol. 1 (of 2)
George Melly
Beyond the known ports of the Mediterranean lies a river of ancient silences and sudden, scorching heat, where the modern traveler is a mere ghost passing through the monumental shadows of antiquity.
Boston
Upton Sinclair
A quiet revolution begins in a privileged Boston home when a mother abandons her sheltered life to stand between two immigrant laborers and the electric chair. This is a story of how a city’s conscience is bought, sold, and finally broken.
Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
Francis Bacon
The pursuit of knowledge and the navigation of power are never separate, for he who understands the hidden mechanics of the world holds the keys to both his own survival and the advancement of humanity.
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, volume 456, no. 10, October 1853
Various
The nineteenth-century literary magazine exists as a sprawling, conversational window into the past, where the ink of political satire, sharp critical appraisal, and historical investigation blends to capture the distinct pulse of an era.
Household words, No. 2, April 6, 1850
Unknown
The world is a tapestry of ordinary lives and extraordinary dreams, woven together in the quiet light of everyday observation. Here, the hum of the nineteenth century finds its rhythm, transforming the soot of industry and the sting of loss into a chorus of human experience.
The unknown seven
Herman Landon
A shadowed investigator stalks the dark streets of New York, tracking a secret society obsessed with the impossible. He descends into a world where science, greed, and lethal deception collide behind locked doors.
Joan and Co
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Joan Fairburne, a young woman of New York society, feels stifled by the shallow expectations of her world. When a near-fatal accident brings a struggling inventor, Mark Devons, into her home, she finds a new purpose—and a partner—in his ambitious climb toward industrial success.
The magnificent possession
Isaac Asimov
The promise of a miracle material brings not the fortune of a lifetime, but a chaotic, malodorous reckoning that proves some secrets are best left unbothered by human hands.
The trouble at Pinelands
Ernest M. Poate
A quiet wedding is derailed by a sudden, violent death, leaving an innocent man in jail and a household haunted by a restless poltergeist.
The weird of the wanderer
Frederick Rolfe
A traveler slips through the cracks of history, wielding ancient magic and modern wit to command the currents of time and destiny. He is the master of his own impossible journey.
Democracy—false or true?
Richmond, W. B. (William Blake), Sir
The true spirit of a nation lies not in its machinery or its wealth, but in the souls of its citizens. A reimagined England awaits those who seek a path beyond the chaos of modern industrialism.
Records of Captain Clapperton's last expedition to Africa, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Richard Lander
A servant’s solitary journey through the heart of nineteenth-century Africa becomes a harrowing race against exhaustion, treachery, and death following the loss of his commander.
The Black Abbot
Edgar Wallace
A phantom in a monk’s habit haunts the crumbling ruins of a Sussex estate, guarding secrets that threaten to bury the living alongside the long-dead.
The dangerous game
William Le Queux
A famous novelist masks his true identity as a government operative, using his global travels as cover to dismantle an international web of intrigue while grappling with a deeply painful, unrequited love.
Fairy dreams
Jane G. (Jane Goodwin) Austin
The heart searches for a treasure it cannot name, wandering through forests of metaphor and mountain storms to find that the prize was always woven into the fabric of the life it already leads.
Success
Una L. Silberrad
The world often mistakes professional accomplishment for personal worth, but for the true inventor, the only currency that matters is the problem itself.
Astronomy for beginners
Hereward Carrington
Beneath the silent, velvet black of the night sky lies a clockwork universe of unimaginable scale, where suns are born, planets dance in measured orbits, and the very light we see is a messenger from the distant past.
Records of Captain Clapperton's last expedition to Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Richard Lander
They were men stepping into an unknown geography, armed only with curiosity and the dwindling endurance of their own bodies.
Things near & far
Arthur Machen
The road to discovery often begins in the quiet, forgotten corners of one’s own memory, where the boundary between the mundane world and the mysteries of the spirit grows dangerously thin.
The bar act
Bud La Mar
To win a prize, a cowboy must outride his rivals, but to win a legend, he must dare to bolt a piece of junk to his saddle and spin like a hurricane.
Humanism and America
Unknown
The modern temper has produced a terrible headache, and we are left clutching at the shards of a crumbling culture. We seek to diagnose why our century has traded meaningful art for mechanistic despair.
Sandhills sketches
Williams Haynes
The Sandhills offer a sanctuary where the biting frost of a northern winter dissolves into the scent of pine needles and the patient pursuit of field sports under a southern sun.
The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
Gilbert Frankau
The law of the land and the law of the heart are seldom at peace, and for some, the choice between them is a ruinous gamble where the only stake is everything they hold dear.