The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 2
1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 2 of 31.
Twenty years after
Alexandre Dumas
Bound by oath and divided by the shifting sands of history, four inseparable comrades find their loyalties tested as the kingdom they once served descends into civil war.
Victorian Short Stories: Stories of Courtship
Unknown
The human heart remains a notoriously unreliable compass, leading those who follow it into landscapes as treacherous as they are alluring. Beneath the veneer of Victorian decorum, the quietest encounters often mask the most profound upheavals of the soul.
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452: Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852
Various
In this Victorian miscellany, the worlds of romantic deception, industrial progress, and historical inquiry collide, offering a vibrant portrait of a society in the midst of rapid transformation.
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
A young man and his headstrong uncle descend into the throat of an Icelandic volcano, trading the known world for a prehistoric wilderness miles beneath our feet.
The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
Lucas Malet
A body broken, a heart forged in fire, and the relentless pull of a love that refuses to look away: discover the arduous, transcendent path of a soul defined by its own undoing.
That Girl Montana
Marah Ellis Ryan
A young woman with a mysterious past struggles to outrun the shadow of her criminal father in the rugged, untamed wilderness of the Kootenai, where the only law is the one she creates for herself.
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
Joseph Bédier
A man and a woman are bound by a draught of inescapable fate, their lives a feverish pursuit of one another that only the grave can finally quiet. They are lovers whose devotion is their glory and their doom, leaving a trail of broken oaths and blood across the sea.
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
To understand the river, you must first learn how to read its face, for the Mississippi is a living, shifting creature that hides its true shape from everyone but the master pilot.
Emily Brontë
A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
On the lonely, windswept heights of a Yorkshire village, a singular spirit emerges from the shadows of a quiet parsonage to capture the wild, untamable essence of the human soul.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By Himself
Olaudah Equiano
A singular man’s odyssey from the terrors of capture in Africa to the halls of British power, this autobiography documents the indomitable struggle for freedom in an age of chains.
The Crack of Doom
Robert Cromie
The universe is a mistake, and one man intends to correct it by unmaking the earth itself. This harrowing tale of cosmic nihilism and scientific obsession explores the cost of absolute power.
The Rover Boys on the Farm
Edward Stratemeyer
Three inseparable brothers navigate the perils of boarding school life, a family swindle, and a series of relentless rivals in an era where courage and quick wit settle every score.
The Blue Lagoon: A Romance
H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole
Two children, untainted by the complexities of civilization, grow to maturity on a lush, isolated tropical island, guided only by the remnants of a shipwreck and their own burgeoning, instinctual bond.
Henrietta Temple: A Love Story
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
What if the only thing standing between a desperate, debt-ridden soldier and his true love is the very history he is trying to redeem?
Catriona
Robert Louis Stevenson
A young man of upright conscience finds himself trapped in the gears of a political machine, forced to choose between the life of a friend and his own integrity.
Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World
Jonathan Swift
A surgeon with an insatiable hunger for the horizon finds himself cast into worlds where his very existence defies the laws of scale. He discovers that to be a giant among the small is as isolating as being a toy among the great.
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
The shortest distance between two hearts is often blocked by the towering walls of ancient grudges, forcing lovers to build their own world in the shadows of a feud.
The Green Mouse
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
The world is full of people who are meant to be together, if only they could find the right frequency to tune into. In this lighthearted romp through early twentieth-century New York, a mechanical miracle makes destiny a matter of public record.
The Hand in the Dark
Arthur J. (Arthur John) Rees
A shadow hangs over an ancient moat-house, where a brutal crime mocks the legacy of a family built on blood and fire. The truth is not found in the living, but in the cold, mechanical precision of a killer’s design.
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
A retired army surgeon, freshly returned from the horrors of the Afghan war, finds himself sharing lodgings with a man who can deduce a stranger’s history at a glance. Together, they are drawn into a web of murder that stretches from the fog-choked streets of London to the desolate wilderness of the American West.
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
Two sisters navigate the treacherous collision of romantic ideals and harsh social realities, learning that neither pure emotion nor cold calculation alone can secure a life of lasting contentment.
Shakespeare's family
C. C. (Charlotte Carmichael) Stopes
The poet’s story is often told through his verses, but here it is unearthed from tax records, marriage bonds, and dusty property deeds.
Time Crime
H. Beam Piper
The mystery of a missing person is trivial compared to the hunt for an invisible criminal syndicate operating across the infinite, parallel histories of a billion worlds.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Four sisters navigate the transition from childhood to womanhood in a modest New England home, discovering that the most profound adventures are found within the quiet, often difficult work of shaping one’s own character.
Lone Star Planet
H. Beam Piper
The galaxy is a dangerous place, but nowhere is quite as lethal—or as stubborn—as a world that refuses to play by the rules of the Solar League.
Torchy and Vee
Sewell Ford
Torchy, a sharp-witted and irrepressible office secretary, navigates the bustling, high-stakes corridors of the New York corporate world while helping his friends manage the complicated, often humorous entanglements of romance and duty. He is a man who knows that in the city, the most mundane conversation can lead…
Erotica Romana
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man finds his true self, and his true muse, in the sun-drenched ruins of Rome, where the weight of history and the heat of a new romance finally bring his art to life.
I am a woman
Ann Bannon
A young woman flees her father’s suffocating control in Chicago to reinvent herself in New York, only to find that the most profound search for identity lies in the dangerous, magnetic pull of love.
The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
Algernon Blackwood
Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. A chilling sense of unseen, malignant presences lingers in the shadows, waiting for the unwary to disturb the silence.
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
Philip Sidney
A kingdom’s peace fractures when a ruler seeks to outrun an oracle, unknowingly inviting the very chaos he fears. Behind the pastoral mask of idyllic fields lies a volatile landscape of hidden desires, unyielding duty, and the ruinous weight of long-held secrets.
The Gay Cockade
Temple Bailey
The world is full of people waiting for the right moment to begin their lives, but in these pages, the wait is often what defines the spirit.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle
A family curse, a desolate moor, and a spectral hound that leaves real, lethal footprints: these are the grim ingredients that draw a legendary detective into a web of ancient malice and modern greed.
The Damned Thing: 1898, From "In the Midst of Life"
Ambrose Bierce
A hunter discovers a predator that exists entirely outside the range of human sight, proving that reality is far wider—and far more lethal—than our limited senses can perceive.
The Real Adventure
Henry Kitchell Webster
The marriage of a young woman to a man of principle becomes an exploration of autonomy when she realizes that being protected is, for her, a form of imprisonment.
The Ambulance Made Two Trips
Murray Leinster
A single, strange gift delivered with the morning milk leaves a veteran detective suspicious, but he soon realizes that in a town dominated by a ruthless racketeer, the most dangerous weapon is not a gun, but a change in the laws of probability.
The Big Fix
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
HOOK In a world where telepathic secrets are as common as a bad poker hand, one gambler must outwit a crime lord at the Kentucky Derby—without ever actually breaking the law.
The Daughter of Anderson Crow
George Barr McCutcheon
The town of Tinkletown is safe, but only because its self-appointed marshal is perpetually hunting shadows, misinterpreting clues, and stumbling into the middle of genuine criminal conspiracies.
Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories
Unknown
The world is a place of secrets, where the boundary between the seen and the unseen is thinner than a heartbeat, and the truth is often the most dangerous thing one can possess.
Eighty Years and More
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The story of a life is never just a personal narrative; it is the record of how one mind catches fire from the injustices of its time and refuses to look away.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
The human mind is a darkened theater where the most terrifying specters are not those that break down the door, but those that quietly emerge from the shadows of our own perceptions.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Frederick Douglass
The struggle for freedom begins in the mind long before it manifests in action, turning the quietest realization of one’s own humanity into a weapon against those who would deny it.
By Advice of Counsel
Arthur Cheney Train
The law is often a blunt instrument, but in the right hands, it can be a fine needle. These stories follow a legendary legal mind who turns the rigid machinery of justice against those who try to rig it.
![Cover of Love and Freindship [sic]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/love-and-freindship-sic-jane-austen.webp)
Love and Freindship [sic]
Jane Austen
The life of a young woman is never quite as dramatic as she pretends, yet the effort to make it so is the most entertaining spectacle in the world.
Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
Thomas William Lawson
The crushing weight of a rigged market breaks more than just bank accounts; it shatters the mind itself. This is a story of how a man’s obsession with justice transforms into a personal crusade, leading him to gamble with his soul.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The voice of a long-sequestered soul suddenly discovers the language of intimacy, transforming a lifetime of solitude into a defiant, radiant declaration of love.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Fate is a weaver whose loom never rests, turning the threads of kings, beggars, and djinns into a tapestry of wonder where every end is but a beginning.
Complete Short Works of George Meredith
George Meredith
The heart of these tales lies in the fragile barrier between a person’s dignity and the absurdity of their own desires. Observe the world closely, and you will find that the most serious intentions are often the first to collapse under the weight of a well-placed irony.
Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
Alexandre Dumas
A woman’s life is measured in bouquets and debts, but a man’s heart is measured in the silence left behind when the music stops. Some stories are not written to instruct, but to remember those whom the world has already forgotten.