The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 152
8,211 public-domain books, summarised. Page 152 of 172.
Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910
Albert Bigelow Paine
An aging humorist faces the gathering shadows of his final years, finding solace in quiet pastimes, public adoration, and the steady companionship of a devoted biographer.
Smoke Bellew
Jack London
Soft San Francisco dilettante Kit Bellew goes north to the Klondike for a brief excursion and stays to become a trail-hardened sourdough whose strength matches the wild country.
Studies in the History and Method of Science, vol. 1 (of 2)
Unknown
A deep dive into the historical shifts of scientific inquiry, tracing how humanity built its knowledge of the natural world and the human body across centuries.
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A vast, late-nineteenth-century repository of Middle Eastern lore, presenting newly translated tales of wonder, rogue trickery, and courtly intrigue with meticulous anthropological notes.
The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910)
Unknown
An audacious, one-woman monthly journal from the turn of the twentieth century reimagines the structures of domestic labor, marriage, and culture to chart a path toward genuine human equality.
The Garden, You, and I
Mabel Osgood Wright
A group of passionate American friends spend a transformative summer swapping practical plant advice, establishing a rustic camp on an abandoned farm, and nurturing both flowers and sudden romances.
The Man of Genius
Cesare Lombroso
A razor-thin boundary separates the highest reaches of human intellect from the severe pathologies of the brain.
The poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Haunted by grief, unrequited desire, and the terrifying beauty of decay, a mind wrestles with loss through icy melodies, brooding landscapes, and analytical musings on the pure essence of art.
World Stories Retold for Modern Boys and Girls: One Hundred and Eighty-seven Five-minute Classic Stories for Retelling in Home, Sunday School, Children's Services, Public School Grades and "The Story-hour" in Public Libraries
William James Sly
A master storyteller gathers nearly two hundred brief, moral tales to help parents and educators nurture character, imagination, and a lifelong love of truth in growing children.
Captain Fracasse
Théophile Gautier
A penniless Gascon baron abandons his decaying ancestral ruin to join a troupe of traveling actors, exchanging his noble name for a wooden sword to defend a virtuous actress from a ruthless duke.
Cosmic symbolism
Sepharial
This esoteric work reveals how numerical ratios, planetary movements, and ancient geometric laws secretly govern the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of human existence.
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
A masterclass in intellectual portraiture, this volume dissects the motives, moral failings, and grand political movements that shaped the modern Western world.
Georgina's Reasons
Henry James
A handsome young naval officer weds a cold, ambitious New York beauty in secret, only to find himself trapped in a web of deceit that spans continents and shapes the rest of his life.
Old French Fairy Tales
Ségur, Sophie, comtesse de
Bound by trial, enchanted sacrifice, and patient devotion, the children in these tales must outlast dark magic, terrible transformations, and their own missteps to secure a lasting peace.
Roman Legends: A collection of the fables and folk-lore of Rome
Rachel Harriette Busk
Centuries of oral storytelling echo through Rome's cobblestone streets, preserving local versions of classic fairy tales, humorous urban anecdotes, and devout religious lore.
The Best Psychic Stories
Unknown
Bound by invisible threads, the living and the dead cross paths in moments of terror, grief, and revelation.
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Dean C. (Dean Conant) Worcester
An insider’s record of early American colonial governance reveals the complex, contentious, and raw reality of administering a newly acquired tropical archipelago.
Villani's Chronicle: Being Selections from the First Nine Books of the Croniche Fiorentine of Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani
A sweeping, vivid portrait of medieval Florence emerges from the pages of a 14th-century merchant, who captures a rising city-state torn between classical grandiosity, papal politics, and relentless blood feuds.
A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1 of 2)
Thomas M. (Thomas Martin) Lindsay
A religious upheaval does not spring from a vacuum; it takes root in the anxieties, economic shifts, and spiritual longings of ordinary people long before it finds its voice.
Epicoene
Ben Jonson
A misanthropic uncle marries a supposedly silent woman to disinherit his nephew, only to discover that his new household is loud, chaotic, and entirely out of his control.
Giordano Bruno
J. Lewis (James Lewis) McIntyre
A restless sixteenth-century friar breaks his vows, wanders across Europe, and constructs a daring cosmic philosophy that eventually leads him straight into the flames of the Inquisition.
Hyperion
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A grieving scholar wanderlusts across Germany and Switzerland, seeking solace in old stories, long walks, and bright conversation before discovering that the only true cure for loss is turning forward to life.
Orley Farm
Anthony Trollope
When a devoted mother commits a secret crime to secure her infant son’s inheritance, she spends twenty years quietly enduring the terror of discovery, only to watch her sacrifice tear apart the gentle world she fought so hard to join.
Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II
Plutarch
An inquiry into human nature, divine justice, and the cosmos unfolds through lively philosophical dialogues that bridge historical action with metaphysical speculation.
Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland, Vol. 3
Viktor Rydberg
A vast mythic architecture links ancient northern songs, heroic journeys, and cosmic catastrophe into a single unified saga. Across subterranean rivers and frost-bound peaks, divine champions and fallen artisans shape the destiny of gods and men.
The Cryptogram: A Novel
James De Mille
A deathbed promise binds an aristocratic youth and an heiress into a sudden marriage, setting off a sprawling, continent-spanning drama of stolen identities, coded papers, and dark family secrets. <Image alt="Ruins of an ancient castle along a river bank surrounded by lush greenery" caption="An ancient English…
The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
J. M. (John Medows) Rodwell
A single voice calls out from a world of dust and devotion, demanding absolute surrender to an unseen Lord.
The Old East Indiamen
E. Keble (Edward Keble) Chatterton
Driven by commercial ambition and naval daring, armed merchant vessels forged Britain’s trade network across distant seas, enduring storms, mutinies, and wartime battles to shape a global empire.
Under the Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children
Kate Greenaway
Children wander through sunlit gardens, chase hoops, and whisper secrets over garden fences, capturing the fleeting, quiet enchantment of early childhood.
A Selection of Cases on the Law of Torts
Unknown
Legal duties do not spring from abstract sentiment, but from the hard boundaries of proximity, common sense, and statutory obligation. This foundational collection maps the evolving doctrines of civil wrongs across American and English jurisprudence, tracing how courts balance individual liberty against the…
Carnacki, the Ghost Finder
William Hope Hodgson
A detective of the unseen defends the living from terrifying hauntings using ancient magic and modern tools.
Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician
Frederick Niecks
A lonely child who played for emperors grew into an elusive master, transmuting the isolation of exile and chronic illness into music that shattered classical conventions without ever raising its voice.
French Lyrics
Unknown
French verse possesses a distinct beauty of form and spirit, offering English-speaking readers an invitation to set aside artistic prejudice and discover a rich tradition of lyric expression.
Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition
L. W. (Leonard William) King
Ancient clay records unearthed from Mesopotamian soil rewrite the early history of human civilization. These discoveries reveal that the oldest traditions of Creation, early kings, and the Great Flood originate with the Sumerians long before reaching later cultures.
Men of Iron
Howard Pyle
In a perilous fifteenth-century England where a single misstep seals a nobleman's downfall, an outlawed baron's son must master the harsh arts of chivalry to redeem his family's stolen honor and name.
Pyrometry: A Practical Treatise on the Measurement of High Temperatures
Charles R. (Charles Robert) Darling
A clear, methodically structured survey of the physical principles, structural designs, and industrial applications behind the scientific measurement of high furnace temperatures.
Schools of to-morrow
John Dewey
A revolution stirs quietly in American classrooms as educators replace rigid memorization with active, real-world learning.
Seaport in Virginia: George Washington's Alexandria
Gay Montague Moore
A love letter to the architecture and inhabitants of a colonial port, this work recreates the vanished world of 18th-century Alexandria through the stones and stories that remain.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
Stephen Leacock
Sunlight filters through the maples onto small-town Ontario, where grand ambitions routinely collapse into delightfully mild absurdities.
The Accumulation of Capital
Rosa Luxemburg
A rigorous economic inquiry reveals how capitalism must constantly swallow non-capitalist societies to survive, transforming global geography into a arena of imperial expansion, financial debt, and structural crisis.
The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights
William Hallock Johnson
A vigorous, erudite defense of historic Christianity that directly engages twentieth-century biology, psychology, and philosophy to show that modern science enriches rather than undermines orthodox faith.
The Fasting Cure
Upton Sinclair
A radical plea for voluntary starvation, this early twentieth-century treatise promises that abstaining from food clears toxins, restores vitality, and frees the human body from reliance on traditional medicine.
The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902): With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines
O'Rourke, John, Canon
A delicate, water-sensitive crop fails, exposing a structural economic disaster where abundant grain leaves starving harbors and a nation disintegrates under bureaucratic neglect.
The Stephens Family: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens
Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
A sprawling chronicle of frontier migration, early American conflict, and multi-generational ties unfolds across two centuries of births, marriages, and westward movement.
England, My England
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A domestic world of vibrant nature and quiet desperation fractures under the weight of emotional detachment and physical disaster.
Gem-Stones and Their Distinctive Characters
George Frederick Herbert Smith
Nature crafts brilliant crystals beneath immense earth pressures, but only precise physical measurement and disciplined lapidary art unlock the vivid fire inside them.
How I Filmed the War: A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc
Geoffrey H. Malins
A cameraman navigates the mud, shell-fire, and mechanical marvels of the First World War, capturing a reality that forever altered how the public perceived the front line.
John Bull's Other Island
Bernard Shaw
An energetic, highly efficient Englishman and his disaffected Irish partner return to rural Ireland, where romantic mythologies, political ambitions, and corporate land schemes clash under the watchful eye of a defrocked, visionary priest.