The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 120
6,138 public-domain books, summarised. Page 120 of 128.
Sonny Boy
Sophie Swett
A small boy, overlooked by his talented siblings, proves his worth through an unexpected act of kindness that transforms both his own life and the life of a stranger.
You can't win
Jack Black
A young man enters the American underworld of the late nineteenth century, learning the trades of burglary, safecropping, and hobo life before discovering that the game is stacked against him.
A Book of Discovery: The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest Times to the Finding of the South Pole
M. B. (Margaret Bertha) Synge
This expansive chronicle traces the persistent human urge to traverse the unknown, documenting centuries of intrepid journeys across uncharted seas, frozen wastes, and mysterious continents.
Dick and his cat
Mary Ellis
A destitute orphan finds his way in the world through kindness, hard work, and the unexpected fortune brought by his only companion, a stray cat.
Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology
E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
Morphology—the study of the form and structure of living things—reveals that our understanding of biology is not a straight line of progress, but a shifting debate between function, design, and mechanical causality.
Heaven and its Wonders and Hell
Emanuel Swedenborg
The horizon of human existence does not end at the grave, but rather unfolds into a vibrant, structured reality governed by the immutable laws of spiritual correspondence. Here, the life one has chosen in the world becomes the very architecture of one’s eternal home.
Moon Lore
Timothy Harley
The silver disc above holds a thousand faces, shaped by the fears, hopes, and prayers of human history. This exploration of our oldest celestial companion reveals the moon as a mirror for the collective imagination.
Select letters of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
The Atlantic becomes a bridge between worlds in these dispatches, where the wonder of new horizons collides with the encroaching shadows of political betrayal and personal ruin.
Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882-1892
Josef Ohrwalder
A harrowing, firsthand account of ten years held prisoner in the Sudan during the rise and violent consolidation of a fanatic religious empire.
The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest
William Harrison Ainsworth
A 17th-century landscape of sweeping moors and looming forests becomes a cauldron of religious upheaval, feudal land disputes, and black magic as three generations of women confront the dark secrets of Pendle Hill.
A Child's History of England
Charles Dickens
History is rarely a neutral recitation of dates; it is a tapestry of human ambition, cruelty, and the occasional flicker of justice. This narrative invites readers to view the grand, often bloody, progression of the English throne through a lens that values moral clarity over academic distance.
Beyond Lies the Wub
Philip K. Dick
A ship’s crew discovers that their fresh meat supply is a telepathic, philosophically inclined creature. The resulting confrontation explores the thin line between survival and brutality.
Origin of Cultivated Plants: The International Scientific Series Volume XLVIII
Alphonse de Candolle
A centuries-long globe-trotting botanical investigation tracking humanity's everyday staple crops, fruits, and spices back to their lost wild origins.
Ritual of the Order of the Eastern Star
Order of the Eastern Star. General Grand Chapter
This text serves as the official, codified guide for the conduct and structure of a fraternal organization designed for both men and women. It details the standardized procedures for chapter meetings, initiations, and memorial services.
Annie Besant: An Autobiography
Annie Besant
This account traces a singular life’s passage from stifling Victorian piety to radical atheism, and finally to the mystical certainty of Theosophy. It is a candid mapping of a soul in constant, restless motion.
Forty-one years in India: from subaltern to commander-in-chief
Roberts, Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Earl
A British officer spent four decades serving the Empire in India, rising from a green lieutenant on the wild Afghan frontier to commander-in-chief of the largest colonial army in the world.
Legends & Romances of Brittany
Lewis Spence
Brittany possesses a landscape where the ancient past and the supernatural remain stubbornly present. This collection serves as a portal into that world, mapping the intersection of history, myth, and the enduring Breton spirit.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
A window into the workshop of a master, these gathered fragments offer the raw, unpolished seeds of human behavior that blossomed into some of literature’s most enduring portraits of melancholy and grace.
Saint John Chrysostom, His Life and Times: A sketch of the church and the empire in the fourth century
W. R. W. (William Richard Wood) Stephens
Amid the theological fires and imperial corruption of the fourth century, a brilliant preacher rises from the monastic desert to challenge the highest powers of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Damsel and the Sage: A Woman's Whimsies
Elinor Glyn
A series of philosophical exchanges between a questioning young woman and a reclusive hermit, this collection of fables and aphorisms explores the volatile, often irrational nature of human love, desire, and pride.
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12)
James George Frazer
An ancient and universal impulse leads humanity to see the life of the field as the life of a god. Sacred crops are cut, slain, and reborn through the rustic rituals that bind civilization to the soil.
The History of Dartmouth College
Baxter Perry Smith
This account traces the precarious founding and institutional development of an iconic American college, grounding its survival in the singular vision of its founder and the resilience of those who followed.
The Mystery of Francis Bacon
William T. (William Thomas) Smedley
The intellectual brilliance of the Elizabethan age, often attributed to a single playwright, may actually conceal the secret, multi-faceted labor of a polymath statesman. Behind the mask of history lies a meticulously hidden authorship.
Vivian Grey
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
A scheming young prodigy attempts to conquer English high society through shameless manipulation, only to learn that political ambition and reckless arrogance exact a ruinous personal toll.
A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Bayard Taylor
A sprawling, centuries-spanning epic traces a single family of European peoples from their scattered tribal origins through imperial fractures, religious upheavals, and endless conflicts, culminating in the birth of a unified modern nation.
Four Short Stories By Emile Zola
Émile Zola
The world is a grand, glittering show where everyone is frantically buying, selling, or performing, completely oblivious to the inevitable collapse waiting just outside the frame.
George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God
Arthur T. (Arthur Tappan) Pierson
A lifetime of quiet reliance transforms a penniless vision into five massive orphan houses on Ashley Down, sustained entirely by unuttered prayers and unasked gifts.
Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1
Charles Eliot
The eastern world does not view humanity as the master of creation, but as a quiet thread woven into the fabric of nature. Across centuries, the spirit of India shapes Asia’s search for ultimate truth and release.
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions
Charles Mackay
Humanity’s capacity for collective madness remains a constant, recurring force throughout history. From grand financial schemes to the darkest superstitions, entire societies often abandon reason in favor of shared, destructive illusions.
Prayers of the Middle Ages: Light from a Thousand Years
Unknown
A thousand years of human longing and quiet faith, gathered from monastic cells and royal courts, burn through these brief, timeless invocations.
Reminiscences of Tolstoy, by His Son
Tolstoi, Ilia Lvovich, graf
A child’s clear gaze turns toward the legendary Russian author, capturing the intimate domestic life, literary labor, and spiritual turmoil inside Yasnaya Polyana.
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
T. (Tobias) Smollett
A proud, headstrong youth charges through eighteenth-century England and Europe, orchestrating outrageous pranks and chasing romantic conquests until reckless arrogance and financial ruin drag him into a debtor's prison.
The Arts in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance
P. L. Jacob
In the silence of medieval scriptoria and the clamor of Renaissance workshops, European craft transformed raw matter into the visual vocabulary of the Western world.
The Cathedrals of Northern France
M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
An evocative voyage across northern France reveals the magnificent stone monuments whose soaring vaults and stained glass embody the very soul of a nation.
A history of commerce
Clive Day
Every market stall, ancient empire, and transoceanic cable leaves a paper trail recording how human necessity built the global economy.
Culture and Anarchy
Matthew Arnold
A society obsessed with raw economic expansion, mechanical political remedies, and unrestrained individual freedom risks fracturing into aimless, self-righteous factionalism unless anchored by an internal pursuit of total human perfection.
Father Sergius
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A proud imperial officer abandons a brilliant career for the monastery, only to discover that holy walls cannot cage a man's pride.
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 10 (of 10): Bronzino to Vasari, & General Index
Giorgio Vasari
A gilded procession of grand arches, towering floats, and ornate tapestries transforms Renaissance Florence into a living stage for royal power and artistic ambition.
Popular Tales from the Norse
Dasent, George Webbe, Sir
Underneath northern skies, cunning underdogs, monstrous trolls, and enchanted beasts navigate a landscape where unyielding spirit and cleverness overcome brute force and cruel fate.
Sarrasine
Honoré de Balzac
A midnight gaze across a snow-draped garden bridges two stark realms: on one side lies cold, silent mortality, while on the other glitters an opulent Parisian ball masking a dark, forgotten secret.
Tennyson and his friends
Unknown
A circle of brilliant minds gathers around one of history’s greatest poets, leaving behind a portrait of deep loyalty, quiet domesticity, and the enduring human search for meaning.
The Custom of the Country
Edith Wharton
A relentless ambition drives a striking Midwestern woman to climb the rigid peaks of high society, discarding husbands and social codes in her unquenchable thirst for material triumph.
The Evolution of Marriage and of the Family
Ch. (Charles) Letourneau
Across centuries and continents, human intimacy has taken shape not through fixed moral mandates, but through a slow, turbulent evolution driven by necessity, property, and power.
The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)
William Milligan Sloane
A relentless drive for power propels a brilliant general from the fractured politics of revolutionary Europe to the height of imperial rule, recasting a continent through war, law, and sheer ambition.
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Frederick Whymper
Blood, salt, and polar ice write the dark ledger of human ambition across four centuries of ocean travel.
Working With the Working Woman
Cornelia Stratton Parker
Women enter early twentieth-century factories for many reasons, but few commentators ever stop to ask what their daily lives actually feel like on the shop floor.
A History of Spanish Literature
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
Tracing the literary expression of the Iberian peninsula across a millennium, this study shows how Castilian transformed from vulgar Latin into a world language capable of high epic, tragic drama, and inventive narrative.
China's Revolution, 1911-1912: A Historical and Political Record of the Civil War
Edwin John Dingle
An eyewitness report captures the bloody fall of the Qing Dynasty and the chaotic birth of the Chinese Republic.