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7,238 public-domain books, summarised. Page 140 of 151.

The Animal Story Book
Unknown
A sprawling collection of true-to-life accounts and classic legends, this work explores the curious, often heroic, and frequently mischievous nature of creatures great and small.

The Brown Fairy Book
Andrew Lang
Gathered from every corner of the globe, these stories weave together the universal anxieties and wonders of childhood through the timeless lens of folklore. They remind us that whether in a bustling palace or a lonely hut, the human heart remains the same.

The Shepherd's Calendar. Volume I (of II)
James Hogg
The Scottish hills are home to stories where the boundaries between the physical world and the supernatural thin, leaving shepherds and lairds to face the unpredictable hand of providence. These tales capture the raw, haunting spirit of a people living on the edge of wild, desolated landscapes.

The Song of Songs: Translated from the Original Hebrew, with a Commentary, Historical and Critical
Christian D. (Christian David) Ginsburg
This rigorous scholarly work explores the enduring mystery of the Song of Songs, dissecting its historical, grammatical, and moral significance through the lens of mid-19th-century biblical criticism. It challenges centuries of established allegorical interpretation by advocating for a literal, humanistic reading…

The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
William Morris
The ancient song of the north rises again, tracing the blood-soaked lineage of the Volsungs and the tragic, golden doom of the Niblungs.

Theory of the Earth, With Proofs and Illustrations, Volume 1 (of 4)
James Hutton
The world is not a static stage, but a machine in constant motion, where the very stone beneath our feet is a product of fire, pressure, and vast, cyclical time.

Woman's Institute Library of Cookery. Volume 5: Fruit and Fruit Desserts
Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
This comprehensive guide transforms the seasonal harvest into a year-round pantry through systematic instruction in canning, preserving, and the art of confectionery.

Anarchism
Paul Eltzbacher
This systematic study offers a rigorous, neutral map of anarchist thought by analyzing the core principles of its most influential thinkers. It serves as a definitive primer for those seeking to understand the movement beyond common misconceptions.

Book of Etiquette, Volume I
Lillian Eichler Watson
True etiquette is not a rigid set of barriers to keep people out, but a graceful lubricant to help human interactions run more smoothly and kindly. It serves as the whipped cream that gives the cake of success its flavor.

Five Years of Theosophy
Unknown
The quest for ancient wisdom reveals a hidden architecture of the human soul, bridging the gap between scientific inquiry and the eternal mysteries of the spirit.

Human Animals
Frank Hamel
The boundary between humanity and the animal kingdom is porous, a shifting edge where myth, superstition, and the darkest corners of human psychology collide.

The Gadfly
E. L. (Ethel Lillian) Voynich
The secret weight of a long-held betrayal forces a young man to reinvent himself as a jagged, mocking revolutionary, setting him on a collision course with the only person he ever truly loved.

The Mesnevi
Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi
This profound collection of spiritual teachings and parables serves as a foundational pillar of Sufi literature, using vivid allegories to guide the seeker toward the inner light of the divine.

The Monster Men
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A man is created in a lab, possessing a human soul but burdened by a monstrous origin. He must survive a savage wilderness to win the heart of the woman he loves.

The Poet's Poet
Elizabeth Atkins
The poet’s own words serve as our best guide to understanding the mysterious, often contradictory identity of the creative soul throughout the last century and a half.

The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 01 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Lectures
Robert Green Ingersoll
This collection gathers the fiery, articulate arguments of a nineteenth-century orator who championed reason, science, and the absolute liberty of the human mind. It serves as a manifesto for the secular age.

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 18
Robert Louis Stevenson
A traveler traverses the vast Pacific, documenting the fading traditions of remote islanders and the encroaching influence of colonial powers in a world caught between ancient custom and modern wreckage.

A Book of Remarkable Criminals
H. B. (Henry Brodribb) Irving
Driven by dark passions and cold calculation, these portraits explore the intersection of motive and action in the lives of history’s most notorious offenders.

A Tale of a Tub
Jonathan Swift
A labyrinthine satire on human folly, this work dissects the pretensions of religion, philosophy, and literature through a chaotic blend of allegory and intellectual mischief. It remains a foundational masterpiece of ironic prose.

Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House), Retold from the Japanese Originals: Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2)
James S. (James Seguin) De Benneville
HOOK This atmospheric chronicle explores the eerie, lingering legacy of a haunted Edo estate, weaving together the lives of historical figures and the restless spirits of the Tokugawa era.

Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 07 (of 15), Spanish
Charles Morris
This chronicle traces the turbulent evolution of Spain from the mythical age of King Wamba to the decisive naval battles of 1898, capturing the relentless spirit of a nation defined by its conquests and its losses.

Man in the Iron Mask (an Essay)
Alexandre Dumas
A captive whose features were never seen, but whose existence haunted the corridors of power, remains the ultimate symbol of arbitrary, unreachable tyranny. No single key unlocks this cell, yet the mystery itself endures.

Social Life in the Insect World
Jean-Henri Fabre
This collection of observations brings the hidden dramas of the insect world to life, revealing a landscape of bizarre rituals, brutal survival, and surprising sophistication beneath our feet.

The Art of Letters
Robert Lynd
Literature is a conversation that transcends the grave, and these reflections serve as a bridge between the reader and the giants of the English tradition. Here, the pursuit of letters is treated not as a dry academic exercise, but as a living, breathing, and often messy human endeavor.

The Invisible Censor
Francis Hackett
A collection of incisive, restless observations that cut through the polite veneers of early twentieth-century American life to expose the uncomfortable truths underneath.

Time Enough at Last
Lyn Venable
HOOK After a nuclear apocalypse leaves him the last survivor in a ruined city, a bookish man finally finds the solitude he has always craved—only to have his own fragility betray him at the moment of triumph.

Turkish Literature
Epiphanius Wilson
This volume offers an evocative, scholarly doorway into the Ottoman literary imagination, bridging the gap between historical tradition and the Western reader through a curated collection of fables, courtly poetry, and narrative folklore.

Crises in the History of the Papacy: A study of twenty famous popes whose careers and whose influence were important in the development of the church and in the history of the world
Joseph McCabe
The papacy stands as an institution of unrivaled longevity and influence, a subject whose historical weight often obscures the individual men who occupied the throne of St. Peter. This volume examines twenty pivotal figures, tracing how their personal ambitions, moral failures, and administrative strategies shaped…

Great short stories, Volume 2 (of 3)
Unknown
The veil between the living and the dead wears thin in these haunting chronicles, where the past refuses to stay buried and every shadow hides a secret waiting to be told.

Quotes and Images From The Works of George Meredith
George Meredith
A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin. This collection gathers the sharp, bracing observations of a Victorian master who found the human comedy written in the wrinkles of our social pretenses.

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 06 of 12)
James George Frazer
The ancient rituals of death and rebirth reveal the deep, shared anxieties of humanity across time. This investigation maps the mythic landscapes where human fate and the fertility of the earth are inextricably bound.

The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental Science
T. (Thomas) Troward
The universe is not a collection of external forces to be feared, but a living, responsive intelligence waiting for the individual to recognize their own inherent capacity to direct it.

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
The state, at its best, is a moral organism defined by duty, tradition, and the fragile balance of human rights. Through a series of urgent letters and public addresses, the architect of this collection argues that political power is a trust, not a possession.

Three Plays
Luigi Pirandello
The masks we wear to survive are often more real than the people beneath them. These three plays dismantle the safety of certainty, revealing that truth is a mirror shattered by the very act of looking.

Twenty Years of My Life
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
A life defined by the pursuit of literature and the art of hospitality, this memoir captures the shifting tides of the late Victorian and Edwardian literary world through the eyes of a dedicated connector of people.

An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America
J. P. (John Patterson) MacLean
Thousands of displaced Scots sought a new life in the American wilderness, only to find themselves caught in the gears of a revolution they neither invited nor understood.

Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
Jules Verne
The nineteenth century represents a breathless era of global mapping, where the final blank spots on the world’s atlas vanish under the persistent scrutiny of explorers. This exhaustive chronicle captures the sheer scale of that ambition, documenting the mapping of continents, the navigation of treacherous polar…

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies: or Man of Pleasure's Kalendar for the Year, 1788
Anonymous
This guide serves as a candid, irreverent directory of London’s eighteenth-century demimonde, cataloging the city’s working women with a blend of tactical appraisal, anatomical detail, and poetic flourish.

History of Religion: A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems
Allan Menzies
Religion is a universal human phenomenon, shaped by the slow evolution of social bonds and moral ideals from the earliest tribal roots to the complex, world-spanning systems of faith that define modern civilization.

Jerusalem Delivered
Torquato Tasso
A sweeping epic of faith, war, and enchanted desire, this Renaissance masterpiece follows the Crusaders as they strive to reclaim the Holy City through blood, valor, and the intervention of the supernatural.

The Grey Woman and other Tales
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Through tales of domestic peril and urban struggle, these narratives capture the quiet, persistent courage of women navigating worlds that often treat them as property or afterthoughts.

The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family
William Garden Blaikie
A relentless explorer and devout missionary, David Livingstone spent his life mapping the African interior, determined to combat the slave trade and open the continent to the world.

The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast
Various
The rivers of Great Britain are the arteries of its history, and this sweeping survey maps the life—both pastoral and industrial—that thrives along the banks of its most storied eastern waterways.

We of the Never-Never
Jeannie Gunn
HOOK This is a vivid, autobiographical account of a city-bred woman’s year living in the heart of the Australian Northern Territory, where harsh wilderness and human warmth collide.

Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical Psychology
William Walker Atkinson
Mental efficiency is not an innate gift but a skill that can be developed through the systematic training of one’s own cognitive faculties.

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Honoré de Balzac
Lucien de Rubempré arrives in Paris with grand poetic ambitions, only to discover that the literary world is a ruthless marketplace where integrity is the first casualty of survival.

A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad
F. W. (Frederick William) Harvey
A soldier’s lyric heart beats against the brutality of war, finding a sanctuary of memory in the green hills of home.

Blazing the Way
Emily Inez Denny
The pioneer experience in the Pacific Northwest was a rugged process of clearing forests, building homes, and navigating a rapidly shifting landscape. This collection captures the quiet, persistent labor of those who first transformed a wilderness into a home.