The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 12
1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 12 of 31.
The white rain came
Merwin, Sam, Jr.
When an inscrutable, planet-spanning intelligence begins killing human colonists, two telepathic spouses must risk their minds and bodies to master a force beyond human comprehension.
Daredevil
Leslie Charteris
The shadow of an unseen organization threatens the heart of London, and only a man with a penchant for high-stakes peril stands between the city and total ruin.
The black kiss
Robert Bloch
A young artist inherits a remote coastal house, only to find his dreams and his body slowly surrendering to a submerged, ancient hunger waiting in the dark tides.
Household words, No. 26, September 21, 1850
Unknown
A glimpse behind the curtain of mid-Victorian life reveals a world where steam engines challenge the rhythm of the soil and the wary gaze of a police spy follows you into the sanctuary of a cafe.
The flower and the leaf
Unknown
The world awakens in a rush of green, where hidden allegories of endurance and fragility play out in a meadow that defies the turning of the seasons.
The haunting hand
Walter Adolphe Roberts
A young actress faces a chilling nocturnal visitor in her New York brownstone, sparking a dangerous investigation that weaves together the glitz of the movie industry and the cold reality of criminal greed.
Law-star for an outlaw
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The life of an outlaw is a lonely vigil, but for one man, clearing a dead relative’s tarnished name becomes a dangerous, high-stakes hunt that forces him to confront a hidden evil lurking in a quiet town.
A municipal feud
Ernest Haycox
The history of two bitter neighbors is a study in how easily pride and malice can be mistaken for principle.
The bitter tea of General Yen
Grace Zaring Stone
Megan Davis, a young woman bound for missionary work in China, finds her life redirected when she is swept into the orbit of a sophisticated and enigmatic Chinese general amidst the violent upheavals of the 1920s.
An historical account of all the voyages round the world, performed by English navigators, vol. 2 of 4
Unknown
The high seas offer few promises beyond the horizon, yet the relentless pursuit of plunder, discovery, and survival draws men into the deepest reaches of an unforgiving world.
How they loved him, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Florence Marryat
Fenella is a girl finding her footing in a world that never prepared her for the coldness of her own mother. A secret, blooming romance in a remote seaside town becomes her only refuge from a reality she does not yet understand.
Grateful Peter's new year's gift
Ruth Lamb
The snow falls heavily on the last night of the year, trapping a young boy in a world of biting wind and crushing poverty. But a single, accidental collision with a passing cab is about to change his life forever.
How they loved him, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Florence Marryat
A woman’s secret past, once buried in the quiet of a country village, rises to claim her soul as she navigates a marriage built on silence and social expectation.
The Green Dolphin
Sara Ware Bassett
Sometimes the smallest, most quiet lives are the ones that anchor us, yet even the most peaceful harbor can be stirred by the gentle ripples of a new, unexpected enterprise.
The Roman hat mystery
Ellery Queen
A man is found dead in a crowded theater, yet the murderer seems to have vanished into thin air. A father and son must now dismantle the impossible to reveal a cold-blooded secret.
The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
Florence Marryat
The sudden chill of a midnight footstep, the secret sins of a new husband, and the weight of long-buried letters define a collection where the boundary between the living and the spectral is dangerously thin.
Saved from herself
Adelaide Stirling
A woman’s desperate gamble to secure her future through a high-society marriage collapses into a nightmare of blackmail, murder, and the precarious survival of her daughter. Beneath the polished veneer of Victorian wealth lies a lethal web of secrets.
The winner and new
Ib Melchior
In a future where television is the absolute arbiter of reality, two men enter a shimmering force-field to duel for the highest stakes imaginable. Only one will emerge alive, while the other faces a terrifying erasure.
Verses
Violet Jacob
The world is vast, yet held within the compass of a single, watchful heart. Between the quiet English garden and the burning plains of the East, these verses map the silent spaces where memory and longing meet.
Cartels
Wendell Berge
Global industrial monopolies operate in the shadows, quietly strangling competition and tethering the world’s progress to the interests of a select few. This investigation exposes the mechanics of that control.
The hand of God
Murray Leinster
HOOK A mob gathers at a dark, stifling jail, desperate to lynch a man accused of a cold-blooded murder. The sheriff stands alone against them, clutching a revolver and praying for a miracle to stop the bloodshed.
Two happy years in Ceylon
C. F. (Constance Frederica) Gordon Cumming
The verdant, sun-drenched landscapes of a nineteenth-century island paradise unfold through the eyes of a persistent traveler who finds beauty in every forest, temple, and colonial canal.
The vidiot
Ib Melchior
The future is never as safe as we imagine, especially when the barrier between reality and the lens begins to dissolve. A single moment of technical failure can reveal a terrifying, limitless horizon.
The man who mastered time
Ray Cummings
The boundaries of our reality are thinner than they appear. A single machine, a simple twist of a dial, can strip away the present and drop a man into the terrifying vastness of the deep future.
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 3, October, 1894
Unknown
A collection of fine-edged prose and verse, this quarterly volume captures the sharp, aesthetic pulse of the 1890s, where traditional decorum begins to fray against the encroaching tide of modern irony.
The Old Lady flies
Raoul Whitfield
A battered, oil-stained Jenny biplane is all that stands between a veteran stunt pilot and the end of his career. Can a piece of machinery really possess a soul, or is it just the last, desperate hope of a man who refuses to be grounded?
Joe Strong and his wings of steel
Vance Barnum
A young acrobat takes to the clouds, balancing the perils of his experimental steel wings with the high-stakes drama of circus life and a race for his family’s stolen fortune.
The magic ring, Vol. 1 (of 3)
La Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich Heinrich Karl, Freiherr de
A young knight enters a world of shifting spells and chivalric duty, where every encounter is a test of character and every blade speaks of ancient, heavy vows.
Borrowed feathers
Ruth Lamb
Annette Clifford is a young woman living in the shadow of her family’s desperate attempts to maintain a veneer of wealth. When a sudden stroke of fortune changes her circumstances, she must learn the difference between true value and outward display.
An historical account of all the voyages round the world, performed by English navigators, vol. 4 of 4
Unknown
The vast, salt-sprayed chronicle of human endurance unfolds here, recording the men who sailed to the world’s furthest edges and the landscapes they found waiting in the silence of the unknown.
Miniatures of French history
Hilaire Belloc
A series of vivid, captured moments reveals the long, turbulent journey of a nation, moving from the earliest Greek voyagers to the fires of the twentieth century.
Ash-Wednesday
T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
The aged eagle stills its wings, choosing to renounce the vanity of past power in exchange for the quiet, difficult labor of finding grace in a world grown small and dry.
The happiness of Hazelbrook
Charlotte Grace O'Brien
The path of duty is often narrow and shadowed by temptation, yet this quiet tale reveals that true happiness is found only when one chooses the difficult right over the easy wrong.
The adventures of Heine
Edgar Wallace
The hunter becomes the hunted in this sharp, darkly comic portrait of a German spy whose unwavering belief in his own genius is matched only by his consistent failure to outwit the British.
Three sevens
Perley Poore Sheehan
A man walks out of a prison hell, not to flee the law, but to settle a debt of conscience that weighs heavier than his iron chains.
The story of Nelson
Edmund Francis Sellar
Born in a quiet Norfolk rectory, Horatio Nelson rises from a sickly, determined boy to the undisputed master of the high seas, his life a relentless pursuit of duty, glory, and the decisive destruction of the enemy.
Fighting for fortune
Roy Franklin
A young man accused of a crime he did not commit must outwit a web of local corruption and prove his character to reclaim his future.
I, Mars
Ray Bradbury
The phone rings for a man who has lived alone on Mars for sixty years. He is about to discover that his most dangerous enemy is not the isolation of the planet, but his own younger self.
The Catholic Church and history
Hilaire Belloc
The Catholic Church stands as a singular anomaly in the human story, a society claiming divine foundation and infallible authority. Is this claim a product of history, or a delusion that history itself inevitably dismantles?
Robert Frost
Gorham Bert Munson
A poet is defined not by the extremes he pursues, but by the discipline with which he carves meaning from the ordinary grain of human life.
The Hunniwell boys and the platinum mystery
L. P. (Levi Parker) Wyman
An electric aircraft hums silently over the Pacific, carrying two brothers into the path of a desperate mystery. Beneath the cliffs of Hawaii, they must outwit a shadow to secure a fortune hidden in the sand.
How joy was found
Isobel Wylie Hutchison
The search for meaning is a journey of the heart, where every trial we face is merely a reflection of the shadows we carry within ourselves.
The sinister mark
Lee Thayer
A star of the stage vanishes, leaving behind a blood-stained scarf and a trail of baffling, contradictory clues. A private investigator must unravel a web of identity to find a woman who was never truly there.
Marigold
Edith Allonby
In the inverted, crystalline world of Lucifram, where motives are transparent and the inhabitants possess strange, superior powers, a young woman’s impulsive masquerade uncovers the fragile, hidden humanity within a cold and rigid society.
A young man's story
Sarah Doudney
The path to reconciliation is often hidden in the gloaming, where the barriers between spirit and substance dissolve to pull two drifting hearts back toward one another.
Fawn in the wood
Unknown
A royal quest for connection is thwarted by a slighted spirit, transforming a sheltered princess into a creature of the woods who must overcome a curse to find the heart she already loves.
The trail of deception
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The law of the range is written in lead and sweat, but the law of the heart is a far more dangerous mystery for a man who has never held a gun or sat a horse.
Claribel
Lucy Ellen Guernsey
In the quiet of a country school, a lonely, self-absorbed girl discovers that the secret to healing a wounded heart is not to be found in withdrawal, but in the service of others.