The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 219
10,588 public-domain books, summarised. Page 219 of 221.
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 3 (of 5)
Unknown
When an archer shoots an apple from his own child's head, he does not always act under the cruel coercion of a tyrant; in the English forest, he steps forward willingly, risking everything purely for the thrill of glory.
The Gentle Art of Faking: A history of the methods of producing imitations & spurious works of art from the earliest times up to the present day
Riccardo Nobili
A sweeping examination of forged beauty across the centuries, this study uncovers how collector vanity and artful trickery have mirrored one another from antiquity to the modern saleroom.
The Gospel of St. John
Joseph MacRory
A meticulous textual defense of the Fourth Gospel balances strict doctrinal authority with clear, verse-by-verse structural analysis.
The Heart of Pinocchio: New Adventures of the Celebrated Little Puppet
Collodi Nipote
When the world collapses into war, a wooden puppet decides his place is on the front line with his nation’s soldiers.
The Moon Maid
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A multigenerational struggle between freedom and tyranny begins in space and spans centuries across a subterranean lunar world and a desolate, conqueror-ravaged Earth.
The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
A rigorous literary study details how African American creators built an enduring cultural heritage across poetry, prose, drama, fine arts, and music.
The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 2
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dark romantic ballads, socio-political indictments, and spiritual meditations converge in a powerful collection that examines human suffering, earthly devotion, and divine transcendence.
The Theory of Stock Exchange Speculation
Arthur Crump
A ruthless dissection of modern financial markets reveals why amateur operators almost inevitably lose their fortunes to structured institutional forces.
The Two Brothers
Honoré de Balzac
A mother’s misplaced devotion fuels a bitter struggle between two very different brothers for a lucrative provincial inheritance.
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume III
Various
Lawyers, judges, and civil servants transform from guardians of order into instruments of state-sponsored terror when the legal apparatus of a nation is weaponized against its own people.
Turns about Town
Robert Cortes Holliday
An observant flâneur wanders through early twentieth-century cities, capturing the quiet comedy, eccentric personalities, and overlooked rhythms of daily life.
Twentieth Century Inventions: A Forecast
George Sutherland
Looking ahead to a new century, a technological journalist measures the gap between technical possibility and practical adoption, forecasting how energy, transport, and industry will evolve.
Ursula
Honoré de Balzac
A gentle, pious orphan finds her rightful fortune stolen by scheming small-town relatives, setting off a quiet war of provincial greed against supernatural justice.
Alexander the Great: Makers of History
Jacob Abbott
A young prince tames an unmanageable warhorse, inherits an empire before his prime, and leads a disciplined army across continents to tear down the power of Persia.
Ballads of a Bohemian
Robert W. (Robert William) Service
A struggling artist starves cheerfully in the garrets and cafes of Montparnasse, only to be cast from his romantic ideal into the gory carnage of the Western Front.
Captain John Smith
Charles Dudley Warner
A clear-eyed, witty debunking of America’s favorite tall-tale hero, this volume strips away centuries of romance to reveal the real, deeply flawed, yet endlessly fascinating human being beneath the myth.
Chronicles of Strathearn
Unknown
Deep in the valley of the River Earn, centuries of battle, faith, and local devotion shape a uniquely stubborn Scottish landscape.
Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady
Samuel Richardson
Bound by a tyrannical family and pursued by a brilliant, ruthless libertine, a young woman fights to preserve her moral autonomy through an agonizing sequence of betrayal, captivity, and spiritual defiance.
Diplomatic Days
Edith O'Shaughnessy
A young diplomat's wife arrives in Mexico City just as a thirty-year dictatorship crumbles, witnessing a delicate social world unraveling against the backdrop of impending revolution.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention": Volume 7, Slice 2
Various
An exhaustive index of human knowledge maps the world through alphabetized fragments of geography, law, art, and imperial history.
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Ephesians
Alexander Maclaren
A collection of detailed, practical sermons on the Epistles of Ephesians, Peter, and John. Alexander Maclaren breaks down biblical texts line by line, emphasizing personal transformation, divine strength, and active Christian faith over mere doctrinal intellectualism.
Great bands of America
Alberta Powell Graham
A vibrant brass fanfare echoing through city parks, athletic fields, and capital streets tells the story of American democracy finding its true public voice.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851
Various
A vibrant mid-nineteenth-century repository of high narrative, global travelogue, domestic comedy, and contemporary news, offering an expansive mirror of Victorian public taste.
Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Volume 1 (of 2): A picture of Judaism, in the century which preceded the advent of our Savior
Friedrich Strauss
A young Egyptian Jew journeys across the desert to Jerusalem, seeking to ground his soul in the living traditions and ancient worship of his ancestors.
James Fenimore Cooper
Mary Elizabeth Phillips
Before the fame of his frontier adventures and high-seas tales captured the nineteenth century, an impulsive young American sailor transformed his real-world voyages into a vibrant new literary tradition.
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Gaius Glenn Atkins
A long-simmering crisis of faith, driven by evolution, psychology, and a desire for bodily healing, birthed a array of new movements outside traditional Christianity that permanently reshaped modern spiritual life.
On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny
Flora Annie Webster Steel
In the red shadow of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, standard human allegiances dissolve, forcing British occupants and Indian citizens to navigate a shared collapse of order and conscience.
Open That Door!
R. Sturgis (Robert Sturgis) Ingersoll
An invitation to step out of the narrow routines of daily labor and enter a larger world through the transformative power of purposeful reading.
Poems
Lionel Johnson
A delicate, haunted quiet pervades these verses, where classical learning and intense religious devotion collide with the aching solitude of late-nineteenth-century life.
Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks: A Picture of New England Home Life
Charles Felton Pidgin
A wealthy young gentleman from Boston arrives in a rural country village, setting off a chain of local gossip, small-town rivalries, and unexpected courtships.
Secret Chambers and Hiding Places: Historic, Romantic, & Legendary Stories & Traditions About Hiding-Holes, Secret Chambers, Etc
Allan Fea
A network of hidden trapdoors, hollow beams, and subterranean tunnels traces the desperate architectural legacy of hunted priests, fleeing monarchs, and political conspirators across Britain.
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
William Isaac Thomas
Differences in physical constitution and movement between men and women shape every layer of human culture, driving social structure, economic roles, and mental life.
Sex-Love, and Its Place in a Free Society
Edward Carpenter
A vision of personal liberation and cultural renewal that seeks to rescue human passion from legalism, shame, and commercial degradation.
Shapes that Haunt the Dusk
Unknown
In quiet rooms and sundrenched clearings, everyday American life frays at the margins, exposing ghostly apparitions, vanished architecture, and uncanny premonitions that ordinary reason cannot explain.
Tell England: A Study in a Generation
Ernest Raymond
They set out from the shadow of their quiet public school with high hearts and untried ideals, only to find their youth tested and transformed in the dust and fury of Gallipoli.
The Claverings
Anthony Trollope
Money and devotion collide when an ambitious young Englishman finds himself torn between two women: the worldly lover who abandoned him for a title, and the gentle, constant girl who accepted him when he had nothing.
The Conquest of the Old Southwest
Archibald Henderson
Beyond the eastern mountain barrier lay a vast, untamed wilderness where land-hungry pioneers, ambitious land speculators, and fierce Indian nations collided in a fifty-year struggle that forged the raw, democratic instinct of a expanding American nation.
The Diary of a U-boat Commander: With an Introduction and Explanatory Notes by Etienne
King-Hall, Stephen, Sir
Beneath the cold steel of the Imperial German Navy lies a fragile heart, torn between fanatical duty, harrowing undersea warfare, and an agonizingly fatal romance.
The Giant Raft
Jules Verne
A family floats down the Amazon on a colossal wooden raft, completely unaware that an extortionist on board carries the secret that could save—or condemn—their patriarch.
The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating: Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and author
Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
Hands trace intricate ink lines upon smooth parchment as gold leaf catches the faint flickering light of a quiet monastic scriptorium.
The House of Arden: A Story for Children
E. (Edith) Nesbit
An ancient English estate, two penniless siblings, and a magic mole with a gift for turning back time drive this inventive time-travel adventure toward a choice between worldly rank and family love.
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
George Smith
A rural cobbler with an unquenchable gift for languages transforms himself into the pioneer of modern Asian missions, translating ancient texts and reshaping nineteenth-century Bengal.
The Lone Ranche
Mayne Reid
Surrounded by desert sand and hunted across a hostile frontier, a fallen trader and a deposed officer band together to survive the high plains of New Mexico.
The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick: Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings
Unknown
A young captive breaks his chains to transform an entire island, forging a national faith through miraculous encounters, unyielding devotion, and stubborn, enduring love for a foreign shore.
The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422-1509. Volume 6 (of 6), Part 1 (Letters, Chronological Table): New Complete Library Edition
Unknown
A collection of fifteenth-century letters offers an intimate window into the lives of a Norfolk gentry family navigating civil war, legal disputes, and daily estate management across generations.
The Story of Wellesley
Florence Converse
An institution born from a singular vision faces the test of time, tragedy, and transformation as it defines higher education for American women.
The Vanishing of Betty Varian
Carolyn Wells
An isolated cliffside estate, a father murdered behind locked doors, and a daughter who vanishes without a trace—only to reappear months later in a silent movie reel.
The Vitality of Mormonism: Brief Essays on Distinctive Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
James E. (James Edward) Talmage
A clear-eyed, systematic defense of Latter-day Saint theology presents the faith not as a modern novelty, but as the literal restoration of ancient Christian truth through divine revelation, structured around the eternal progression and free agency of human spirits.