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All free summaries — page 15

1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 15 of 31.

Cover of Astounding Stories, August, 1931

Astounding Stories, August, 1931

Various

Beyond the thin, fragile veil of the modern world, strange civilizations, alien geometries, and lethal technologies wait to be unleashed by the curious. Step through the gate and face a reality where science is both a savior and a sharpened blade.

Adventure8 min read
Cover of The Secret of the Ninth Planet

The Secret of the Ninth Planet

Donald A. Wollheim

The solar system is dimming, its life-giving warmth siphoned away by an unknown adversary. A young man, an experimental spaceship, and the desperate hope of humanity race across the void to face a cosmic thief.

Adventure7 min read
Cover of Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930

Various

The boundaries of our world are far more fragile than they appear. Beneath the crust, behind the clouds of Venus, and inside the silent laboratories of men, the impossible is merely a calculation waiting to be solved.

Adventure8 min read
Cover of Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Truth is a woman, and the philosophers who have sought her have been clumsy suitors, mistaking their own narrow, human prejudices for universal laws.

Philosophy & Ethics7 min read
Cover of Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863

Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863

George Byron Merrick

The river was a living, breathing creature, and for a few short years, it demanded everything from the men who dared to learn its treacherous, shifting language.

Biographies7 min read
Cover of Astounding Stories, June, 1931

Astounding Stories, June, 1931

Various

This collection of early science fiction offers a window into the rapid, inventive, and often breathless storytelling that defined the pulp era. Through a series of novelettes and serialized novels, the authors propel characters through time, across the solar system, and into the dark heart of scientific obsession.

Adventure7 min read
Cover of Brood of the Dark Moon: (A Sequel to "Dark Moon")

Brood of the Dark Moon: (A Sequel to "Dark Moon")

Charles Willard Diffin

The path home lies across a void of lethal cold, where the stars watch silently as broken people struggle against a cruel, cosmic design.

Adventure7 min read
Cover of Astounding Stories, May, 1931

Astounding Stories, May, 1931

Various

The future is not a destination, but a volatile laboratory where science and humanity collide. Step into a world of soaring machines, cosmic mysteries, and the desperate struggle to preserve our fragile civilization.

Adventure7 min read
Cover of Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition

Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition

Alexis Thomson

When the delicate machinery of the human frame is shattered by accident or marred by disease, the surgeon’s task is to navigate the anatomy of the living with both the caution of a mechanic and the precision of an artisan. This volume offers a clinical map of the extremities, head, and neck, providing a systematic…

Health & Medicine7 min read
Cover of White nights, and other stories

White nights, and other stories

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The human spirit is a labyrinth of shadows and sudden light; here are the confessions of those who wander its cold, unreachable corners, seeking warmth in the briefest flashes of connection.

Russian Literature7 min read
Cover of Simple Sabotage Field Manual

Simple Sabotage Field Manual

United States. Office of Strategic Services

A tiny, ordinary act—a misplaced file, a dulled tool, a pedantic question—can be more effective than an explosion. This manual reveals how the smallest frictions can grind a massive, organized machine to a halt.

History - Modern (1750+)7 min read
Cover of Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau

To live deliberately and encounter the essential facts of existence, one must first strip away the non-essential, finding in the quiet of the woods a mirror for the soul.

American Literature8 min read
Cover of The Lovers Assistant

The Lovers Assistant

Henry Fielding

The game of love is a calculated pursuit, and here is a master strategist’s guide to ensuring victory in the relentless hunt for affection. Whether you are an amateur or an expert, this manual provides the precise maneuvers necessary to secure your prize.

British Literature8 min read
Cover of The 2006 CIA World Factbook

The 2006 CIA World Factbook

United States. Central Intelligence Agency

This comprehensive guide to the nations of the world offers a snapshot of global stability, economic output, and political geography as they stood in 2006. It functions as a definitive inventory of the human project at the start of the twenty-first century.

Encyclopedias/Dictionaries/Reference8 min read
Cover of The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 4 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 4

The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England, Volume 4 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 4

Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de

A titan of nineteenth-century letters navigates the collapse of empires and the vanity of power, finding that even the grandest political stage is merely a prelude to the silence of history.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

The two-hour traffic of the stage brings to life a love so absolute it consumes all who touch it, leaving only a quiet, graveyard peace in its wake.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of Great Expectations

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

A young orphan, burdened by his humble beginnings, finds his life irrevocably altered by a secret benefactor, only to discover that the status he craves is as fragile as the illusions he has been taught to cherish.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of "And That's How It Was, Officer"

"And That's How It Was, Officer"

Ralph Sholto

The underworld of Morton City has vanished, not into a prison, but into thin air. In this brisk, eccentric tale, a brilliant scientist’s experiment turns a society wedding into a staging ground for a cosmic vanishing act.

Crime, Thrillers and Mystery7 min read
Cover of A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick

A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick

Jonathan Swift

A modest plan for turning the starving children of Ireland into a national asset, presented with the chilling detachment of a tax accountant.

British Literature8 min read
Cover of Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1836-1840

Memoirs of the Duchesse de Dino (Afterwards Duchesse de Talleyrand et de Sagan), 1836-1840

Dino, Dorothée, duchesse de

A life lived at the intersection of power and private grief, observed by one of the nineteenth century’s most discerning witnesses.

Biographies7 min read
Cover of The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Oscar Wilde

A man’s double life collapses when his invented persona becomes a rival for his own heart, revealing that the most serious truths are often found in the most trivial of lies.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2: Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 2: Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

William Denison Lyman

A region once defined by wild frontiers and silent plains transforms into a landscape of thriving towns, orchards, and schools, carved from the earth by the grit of those who arrived with nothing but hope.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius: Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c

The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius: Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c

Persius

This collection of ancient Roman verse satire acts as a visceral, unforgiving mirror held up to a society obsessed with status, decay, and the performative nature of vice. It is a sharp, often grueling exploration of what happens to a civilization when its private desires outpace its public virtues.

Classics of Literature7 min read
Cover of Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic

Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic

Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne) Weaver

A life defined by the salt spray of the Pacific and the shadowed interior of an American mind, this portrait reveals the man behind the leviathans.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Montreal from 1535 to 1914. Vol. 3. Biographical

Montreal from 1535 to 1914. Vol. 3. Biographical

William H. (William Henry) Atherton

In the bustling boardrooms and quiet cathedrals of a growing metropolis, a generation of titans and civic leaders built the foundations of a Canadian empire. Their lives, traced through individual ambition, reveal the human machinery behind a nation’s ascent.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

Nathan Gallizier

The moonlit ruins of a city haunted by ancient, clashing spirits mirror the storm within a man’s own heart. In this shadowed landscape, love is a dangerous obsession that demands the ultimate sacrifice.

Historical Novels7 min read
Cover of Chaucer's Works, Volume 3

Chaucer's Works, Volume 3

Geoffrey Chaucer

A poet’s dream of grand, celestial architecture, a collection of tragic lives, and a manual for mapping the heavens form a tapestry of medieval ambition and inquiry. These pages capture a mind moving restlessly from the heights of myth to the technical precision of the stars.

British Literature8 min read
Cover of Cornish Characters and Strange Events

Cornish Characters and Strange Events

S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

The past is a graveyard of secrets and a nursery of oddities, where the rugged isolation of a lonely peninsula turns ordinary lives into local mythology.

Archaeology & Anthropology8 min read
Cover of The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

Beresford, Charles William De la Poer Beresford, Baron

The sea is a hard school where only the toughest survive, and this life of an admiral proves that the ocean’s greatest lessons are learned in the furnace of conflict and the quiet of command.

Biographies7 min read
Cover of English Eccentrics and Eccentricities

English Eccentrics and Eccentricities

John Timbs

The most curious corners of human nature often hide in plain sight, tucked away behind the respectable facades of English life. This survey of the peculiar traces the thin, shifting line between genius, madness, and the simple refusal to conform.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 1 of 2)

Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 1 of 2)

Alfred von Reumont

The Renaissance finds its most vivid expression in the life of a single Florentine statesman, whose personal story mirrors the intellectual and political transformation of an entire age.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Infatuation

Infatuation

Lloyd Osbourne

A girl walks away from her father’s house and her secure, prosperous life to elope with a struggling actor, choosing a precarious future over the safety of the known.

Novels8 min read
Cover of The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life

The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life

Frank Everett Stevens

A stubborn warrior’s refusal to accept the changing map of the American frontier triggers a final, bloody struggle that leaves a nation’s history irrevocably altered.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Bleak House

Bleak House

Charles Dickens

The law of the land is a slow-motion catastrophe, grinding the lives of the hopeful and the desperate into dust. Yet within this suffocating machinery, a quiet heart proves that kindness, not precedent, is the only true inheritance.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of The divine comedy

The divine comedy

Dante Alighieri

A man lost in a dark forest finds his way by descending through the depths of human failure and rising toward the blinding, final light of absolute truth.

Classics of Literature7 min read
Cover of The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India

The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India

I. A. R. (Ida Alexa Ross) Wylie

The Hermit Doctor of Gaya unfolds as a story of moral wrestling, set against the backdrop of colonial India, where the boundaries between mercy, duty, and obsession blur in the face of human suffering.

Novels7 min read
Cover of France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West

France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West

Francis Parkman

A solitary Frenchman stakes his life and fortune on an impossible dream, charting a vast, untamed wilderness that will eventually define a continent.

Adventure7 min read
Cover of The Raft

The Raft

Coningsby Dawson

The pursuit of love and the weight of adult responsibility collide in a world where youth is a fleeting, precious season. We are all drifting on the same current, desperately looking for someone to hold onto.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of Leviathan

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

Humanity’s natural state is a war of all against all, and only a single, absolute authority can provide the safety required for civilization to endure.

History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)7 min read
Cover of Addie's Husband

Addie's Husband

Mrs. Gordon Smythies

A woman’s pride and a man’s silent, possessive love collide in the decaying halls of an ancestral estate, leaving a marriage to wither in the shadow of social ruin.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of The 2003 CIA World Factbook

The 2003 CIA World Factbook

United States. Central Intelligence Agency

This exhaustive reference work serves as a neutral, high-altitude survey of the world’s nations and territories as they existed at the dawn of 2003. It offers a standardized, data-driven window into the administrative, economic, and geographic landscape of the planet during a pivotal moment in contemporary history.

Encyclopedias/Dictionaries/Reference8 min read
Cover of Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

A man broken by nineteen years of prison for stealing a loaf of bread finds a single act of radical mercy that upends his entire existence. This is a story of how one life, once touched by grace, struggles against the crushing weight of society’s indifference to reach for redemption.

Classics of Literature8 min read
Cover of The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9]

The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 3 of 9]

William Shakespeare

The mind is a theater where the most tangled impulses of the heart—love, cruelty, jealousy, and absurdity—perform their nightly rotations.

British Literature7 min read
Cover of The Life of John Marshall, Volume 4: The building of the nation, 1815-1835

The Life of John Marshall, Volume 4: The building of the nation, 1815-1835

Albert J. (Albert Jeremiah) Beveridge

The strength of the American experiment rests not on the battlefield, but upon the quiet, deliberate assertion of a single judicial voice in a young and fractious nation.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy

The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy

Marjorie Bowen

This is a portrait of a man who held the world by the throat, only to find that power is a hollow crown. In the shadow of the Italian Renaissance, ambition is not just a drive; it is a lethal obsession that devours everyone it touches.

Historical Novels7 min read
Cover of The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

John Bloundelle-Burton

The desperate struggle for religious freedom often hides the most intimate of secrets, and one man’s search for a lost name leads him into the heart of a violent, shifting war.

Historical Novels7 min read
Cover of Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And Notes

Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And Notes

William H. C. (William Henry Carman) Folsom

A young man arrives at a frontier fort in 1836, witnessing a wilderness transform into a landscape of cities, railroads, and industry over five decades. This is the chronicle of that transformation.

Biographies8 min read
Cover of Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men

Sketches of Successful New Hampshire Men

Various

A life of industry and integrity is the surest path to local renown and enduring prosperity. These portraits of the Granite State’s prominent sons reveal the quiet, steady climb from humble origins to positions of civic and commercial influence.

Biographies7 min read
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