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All free summaries — page 170
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 170 of 988.
The Reef
Edith Wharton
A impulse born of boredom and pride ricochets across several lives when a diplomat’s brief Parisian distraction collides with his long-deferred chance at quiet, noble happiness.
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan
Beatrix Potter
A small polite dog secretly swaps her pie into a cat's oven to avoid eating mouse, only to convince herself she swallowed a metal tin.
The Violoncello and Its History
Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski
Before the modern cello found its voice, a quieter, fretted relative ruled the courtly stage, until centuries of shifting technique, mechanical trial, and dedicated performers reshaped the instrument into the deep, expressive centerpiece of the classical orchestra.
Three essays
Thomas Mann
A master storyteller turns his analytical lens upon the nature of genius, the ruthless dynamics of political power, and the disturbing edges of human curiosity across three distinct investigations of culture and history.
Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
A passionate fifth-century theological battle over the nature of the Church, the validity of sacraments, and the boundaries of Christian unity unfolds through relentless logic and polemical rigor.
A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II
Sleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
An observational journey through a kingdom in decay, this official diary records the delicate balance between imperial British oversight and the chaotic, predatory governance of mid-nineteenth-century Indian royalty.
A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05
Voltaire
Every absurd doctrine and brutal custom in human history was once defended by someone who claimed to speak directly for God or reason.
A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Complete: Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners
Charlotte Biggs
A clear-eyed Englishwoman travels into Revolutionary France, expecting a grand cultural tour, only to find herself trapped inside a nightmare of hyperinflation, arbitrary arrests, and total political chaos.
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions
Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur) Hecker
A legal status that was forged across millennia evolves from ancient patriarchal dominion into modern political self-determination, revealing that liberty is never granted willingly—it is seized through relentless historical pressure.
Alden's Handy Atlas of the World: Including One Hundred and Thirty-eight Colored Maps, Diagrams, Tables, Etc
John B. (John Berry) Alden
An exhaustive inventory of the late nineteenth-century world, captured through cold numbers, land boundaries, and institutional metrics, paints a vivid portrait of an era obsessed with global expansion and industrial progress.
An Egyptian Princess
Georg Ebers
A grand, tragic romance where Egyptian priestcraft, Greek intellect, and Persian imperial ambition collide around an swapped royal bride.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930
Various
A swarm of deadly deep-sea terrors, secret jungle empires, subterranean mutants, and space-faring bandits collide in a pulp science-fiction anthology built on sheer, unrestrained adventure.
Cambridge and Its Colleges
A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton) Thompson
A walk through stone gateways, quiet quadrangles, and ancient libraries reveals how medieval ideals, architectural shifts, and famous personalities shaped one of the world's most enduring seats of learning.
Chronicles of border warfare
Alexander Scott Withers
Blood and hardwood smoke drift through the upper Ohio Valley, where two worlds clash for a continent. In these wilderness chronicles, settlement is bought one clearing, one stockade, and one reprisal at a time.
Democracy, an American novel
Henry Adams
An ambitious New York widow moves to Washington to uncover how power works in America, only to discover that every hand touching the nation's political machinery comes away soiled.
Hippolytus
Euripides
Destructive passion and unyielding pride collide with divine vengeance when mortals dare to deny the gods their due.
History of Ancient Art
Franz von Reber
From the monumental granite tombs of early Egypt to the engineering marvels of the Roman Empire, ancient art evolved not in isolated flashes of inspiration, but as a continuous, methodical inheritance of form and technical skill across Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations.
History of Dogma, Volume 2
Adolf von Harnack
A vast transformation remade early Christianity from an enthusiastic, apocalyptic movement into an enduring, institutionalized global Church.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)
Lewis Melville
An extraordinary eighteenth-century aristocrat defies the rigid social limits of her age, trading London gossip and political maneuvering for daring foreign travel, intellectual freedom, and a lasting place in literary history.
Mary, Help of Christians, and the Fourteen Saints Invoked as Holy Helpers: Instructions, Novenas and Prayers with Thoughts of the Saints for Every Day in the Year
Unknown
Seekers of traditional Catholic devotional structure will find here a comprehensive manual for integrating the intercession of the saints and the Blessed Virgin into a disciplined daily life.
Perfect Behavior: A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in All Social Crises
Donald Ogden Stewart
A sharp, straight-faced parody of 1920s American social manuals, where every rule of decorum escalates into absurdity, outrage, or sudden bodily peril.
Philippine Folk-Tales
Clara Kern Bayliss
Across tropical forests, distant heavens, and the underworld, clever tricksters outwit monsters, humble suitors achieve royal impossible tasks, and ancient deities nurture the spirits of the dead.
Popular scientific lectures
Ernst Mach
A quiet act of observation reveals how simple physical movements ripple into the grand laws of nature.
T. De Witt Talmage as I Knew Him
T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt) Talmage
Through fire, fame, and endless travel, a nineteenth-century preacher reflects on a life spent in pursuit of the pulpit’s reach and the world’s edge.
Tactics, Volume 1 (of 2). Introduction and Formal Tactics of Infantry
W. (William) Balck
Modern warfare demands that brute force yield to precise science, where the geometry of the battlefield and the psychology of men under fire dictate the boundary between victory and annihilation.
The proof
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A hardened drifter stumbles into a snow-dusted town on Christmas Eve, seeking a lost past only to disarm a brewing tragedy and reclaim his own family.
The Trees of Pride
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
On a remote Cornish estate, three exotic trees loom over a mystery of vanishing men, local superstitions, and a seemingly impossible crime. <Image alt="Book cover of The Trees of Pride by G. K. Chesterton" caption="Cover of G. K. Chesterton's mystery novella." src="imageagenttag2565547035013271987"/
Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500
Lina Eckenstein
Before modern historiography gave voice to the women of the Middle Ages, thousand-year-old sanctuary walls shielded an autonomous world of female intellect, administrative power, and spiritual creativity.
365 bedtime stories
Mary Graham Bonner
Winter trees whisper their secrets to snow, while prunes and cabbages debate their worth. Every single night brings a fresh, gentle marvel to quiet young minds.
Audubon the Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Francis Hobart Herrick
An illegitimate child of the French Revolution survives the horrors of Saint-Domingo and Nantes, wanders into the American wilderness, and transforms himself through sheer, stubborn devotion into the greatest bird artist who ever lived.
Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar
Anonymous
A dark lantern, a nimble violin, and a trail of broken locks mark the bloody, labyrinthine career of England's most elusive nineteenth-century criminal.
Children of the Night
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Through strict formal structures and sharp dramatic portraits, this volume confronts the spiritual disorientation of late nineteenth-century life. Its speakers probe behind quiet small-town facades, grappling with loss, moral decay, and the persistent search for light amid dark realities.
Deadfalls and Snares: A Book of Instruction for Trappers About These and Other Home-Made Traps
A. R. (Arthur Robert) Harding
A clever trapper needs only a hatchet, a jackknife, and a bit of string to turn the forest itself into an inescapable, self-resetting apparatus.
Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Shelley traces the fiery trajectories of Italy’s foundational minds through exile, political ruin, and relentless artistic devotion. It is a luminous collective biography that treats genius not as a passive gift, but as an arduous, bloody struggle against a chaotic world.
Life in a Railway Factory
Alfred Williams
In the roaring heat and deafening clangor of an early twentieth-century locomotive plant, industrial labor is laid bare in all its brutal physical strain, quiet camaraderie, and human vulnerability.
Shakespeare's Roman plays and their background
MacCallum, Mungo William, Sir
Understanding Shakespeare’s Roman plays requires examining how historical facts and ancient biographies transformed into dramatic art through Elizabethan and Jacobean lenses.
Studies of Contemporary Poets
Mary Sturgeon
A vital generation of early twentieth-century poets rejects bookish tradition to forge an art rooted directly in the raw, vibrant, and democratic realities of modern human experience.
The Boston Cooking-School Magazine (Vol. XV, No. 2, Aug.-Sept., 1910)
Various
A vivid snapshot of early twentieth-century domesticity offers practical recipes, systematic household advice, and cultural reflections on everything from community preservation to the ethics of caring for aging parents.
The Chinese theater
A. E. (Adolf Eduard) Zucker
An extraordinary ancient theatrical tradition unfolds through its living stagecraft, rich literary history, and surprisingly modern staging techniques.
The Death of Wallenstein
Friedrich Schiller
When a brilliant commander loses faith in his emperor and turns to the stars for guidance, he learns too late that the hardest trap to escape is the one forged by his own ambition.
The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc
John William Polidori
An ambitious young doctor sets out across Europe in the shadow of giants, mapping the landscape, the scandals, and the brilliant minds that define Romanticism.
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
Unknown
A chilling specimen of early American genre fiction, this collection shows how suspense evolved from dark, gothic atmospheric horror into calculating, logical detective craft.
The Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy
C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel) Thompson
Centuries of trial, error, and enchantment shaped the way we heal and harm.
The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1
William Painter
Courts of empire, dark alleys of revenge, and secret bedchambers form a grand tapestry of human passion and betrayal.
The Poems of Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
A vast, exalted canvas of human emotion captures everything from the cosmic ecstasy of universal brotherhood to the melancholic loss of myth and the domestic comic miseries of earthly life.
The Romance of the Milky Way, and Other Studies & Stories
Lafcadio Hearn
Across ancient celestial legends, eerie supernatural hauntings, Victorian philosophy, and quiet wartime observations, a singular voice captures the subtle spirit of a changing world where ghosts and everyday reality merge seamlessly.
The Story of Assisi
Lina Duff Gordon
Amid the olive groves and rugged slopes of Mount Subasio, a medieval city shaped by blood, prayer, and brushstrokes comes vividly into focus.
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 2
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
A sweeping, unsparing assault on religious dogma that strips away celestial illusions to ground human morality, science, and everyday peace firmly in the physical laws of the natural world.