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1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 24 of 31.

Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf
George W. M. (George William MacArthur) Reynolds
A cursed man stalks the forest in the skin of a beast, while a silent, vengeful noblewoman plots to dismantle her own family’s legacy. This is a tale of dark bargains, hidden motives, and the heavy price of blood.

Pygmalion
Bernard Shaw
A flower girl learns to speak like a lady, but discovers that transforming one’s voice is far easier than changing one’s soul or the rigid class boundaries of a city.

The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03
Unknown
The Roman Empire does not fall in a day, but through centuries of shifting frontiers, religious fervor, and the relentless rise of those it once called barbarians.

Macbeth
William Shakespeare
When the shadows of ambition stretch across a weary man’s path, the choice to seize a crown or hold to honor determines everything that follows.

The Book-Hunter: A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author
John Hill Burton
The true bibliophile does not merely own books; he enters into a lifelong, often obsessive, and deeply curious dialogue with the printed word. To hunt for a volume is to hunt for a piece of the world itself.

The Goose Man
Jakob Wassermann
A man of fierce, uncompromising genius and a world that demands he trade his soul for comfort: this is the story of a spirit in constant, abrasive conflict with the banality of his surroundings.

Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles
John Spargo
A rigorous, measured guide to an economic theory often misunderstood, this work separates the cold mechanics of industrial production from the impassioned dreams of those who seek to redefine the social order.

Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners: A Complete Sexual Science and a Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood, Advice To Maiden, Wife, And Mother, Love, Courtship, And Marriage
B. G. (Benjamin Grant) Jefferis
Knowledge is the ultimate safety, providing a guiding light through the physical and moral pitfalls that threaten the health and character of the individual.

The Children's Garland from the Best Poets
Unknown
A ferryman encounters a mischievous, winged boy who cannot see, while elsewhere, a mouse pleads for its life and a sailor attempts a desperate, solitary voyage home. These are the quiet, often haunting echoes of a world captured in verse.

Colleges in America
John Marshall Barker
Higher education in America, once a fragile experiment, has become the bedrock of national progress and moral leadership. This exploration traces how a scattered network of colonial schools blossomed into the vast, influential university system of the nineteenth century.

The Yacht Club
Oliver Optic
The wind is rising on Penobscot Bay, and a young man’s reputation is caught in the squall. Between the building of swift yachts and the sting of false accusations, true character finds its way home.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
To understand the world, we must first accept that our most certain beliefs are not products of logic, but habits of the mind—instincts evolved to help us survive in an uncertain universe.

Manures and the principles of manuring
Charles Morton Aikman
The soil is not a passive vessel but a living, chemical engine, and its capacity to sustain life depends entirely on the hidden, systematic replenishment of the elements we so often take for granted.

The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
William James
The mind is not a static vessel, but a restless, surging stream; discover how your own consciousness constructs the world and defines the persistent "I" that travels through it.

A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden: 2nd edition
William A. Ross
Beneath a brisk wind and billowing sails, a gentleman’s yacht slips from the English coast, seeking the rugged, icy beauty of the North and the quiet majesty of the Scandinavian fjords.

The Border Watch: A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
The wilderness offers no mercy to those who hesitate, and for these scouts, survival depends on a keen eye, a silent tread, and the courage to face an enemy that outnumbers them ten to one.

They Who Knock at Our Gates: A Complete Gospel of Immigration
Mary Antin
The light of the Statue of Liberty still burns, yet some fear the shadows of those who seek her flame. This is a call to return to the original promise of a nation built on universal ideals.

A Treatise on Domestic Economy
Catharine Esther Beecher
In an era of shifting frontiers and rapid social change, one woman sets out to codify the domestic sphere as the vital, intellectual bedrock of a functioning democracy.

Contemporary American Composers: Being a Study of the Music of This Country, Its Present
Rupert Hughes
Across the turn of the century, a chorus of voices emerges from the American wilderness to challenge the long-standing assumption that high art can only flourish on European soil.

The Promised Land
Mary Antin
A young girl leaves a world of shadows and fear to pursue a new existence, only to discover that the truest version of herself was formed in the crucible of her past.

Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 5: Miscellaneous Later Essays
F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller
Our language holds the oldest artifacts of human consciousness, and by tracing the subtle shifts in our words, we can recover the lost history of how we first thought about the sun, the soul, and the gods.

The Life Radiant
Lilian Whiting
The human spirit does not merely endure existence; it possesses the latent, untapped power to illuminate every moment with the divine. By aligning our will with the infinite, we transform the mundane into the miraculous.

Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A single act of forbidden passion ripples across generations, binding the fates of a cloistered nun and an English doctor to the lives of their descendants in a dark, inexorable chain of reckoning.

Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence: A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of Newspaper Writing
Grant Milnor Hyde
A practical guide for the aspiring journalist, this manual demystifies the art of the news lead and the craft of turning raw, chaotic reality into the coherent, compelling prose of the daily press.

The Aeneid of Virgil
Virgil
Between the falling ashes of a burnt city and the rise of an empire that will rule the world, one man must carry the weight of a divine destiny he never asked for. This is the story of a refugee searching for a home promised by the gods, only to find that the price of peace is a war he must win at any cost.

Revelations of Divine Love
of Norwich Julian
The shadow of our own failings never falls across the brilliance of a love that intends our absolute restoration.

Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc
Harry Houdini
The most remarkable illusions are often the most mundane once revealed; this investigation pulls back the curtain on the centuries-old tricks used to simulate the impossible.

Macaria
Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans
A story of duty, heartbreak, and the quiet resilience of the human spirit amidst the crumbling foundations of a world at war.

Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1
Elise Whitlock Rose
To seek the soul of the South of France, one must look past the modern highway to the fortress-like stone of its ancient cathedrals, where history is written in crumbling Romanesque arches and shadowed, silent cloisters.

The Chauffeur and the Chaperon
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
The open water of the Netherlands reveals as many secrets as it hides, where a motor-launch, a borrowed car, and a traveling party of strangers discover that the most complicated routes are the ones leading to the heart.

The History of Herodotus
Herodotus
The world is vast, its customs strange, and human ambition often leads to ruin; these pages chart the rise and fall of empires, mapping the collision between the known corners of the earth and the shifting tides of destiny.

Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7
Charles Herbert Sylvester
A collection meant to guide the curious reader through the vast, varied landscapes of human expression, this volume offers a map to the great literary experiences that shaped the world of letters.

The University of Michigan
Wilfred Byron Shaw
A bold dream of frontier education, rooted in the wilderness of a young state, grew into a powerhouse of American academic life through the sheer, persistent optimism of its founders.

Ralph on the Engine
Allen Chapman
The iron road is a place of sharp whistles, shifting signals, and constant vigilance, where a young man’s character is tested as surely as the steam pressure in his boiler.

An African Adventure
Isaac Frederick Marcosson
Beyond the reach of a map, the heartbeat of a continent reveals itself not in the silence of the wild, but in the restless, grinding gears of industry and the ambition of men who view a wilderness as a balance sheet.

A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy
Isaac Husik
To reconcile faith with reason is the enduring labor of the human mind, a bridge built by thinkers across centuries to unite the ancient certainty of scripture with the unfolding discoveries of philosophy.

Evolution, Old & New
Samuel Butler
Why do creatures change, and what guides that change? A profound, often overlooked mystery of life finds its answer not in cold, random chance, but in the persistent, evolving desires of living things themselves.

The Faith of Our Fathers
James Gibbons
To understand a faith is to see the world through the eyes of its long tradition, tracing its intricate rituals back to their earliest origins.

The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy
Robert Elliott Flickinger
In the quiet corners of the Red River Valley, a dedicated band of teachers and students transformed a humble log cabin into a beacon of hope for a forgotten people.

Manasseh: A Romance of Transylvania
Mór Jókai
The Szekler hills of Transylvania hold secrets as deep as their cavernous gorges, where honor is measured by the strength of one’s word and the weight of a blade. Beneath the quiet labor of iron-miners, a desperate struggle for a woman’s freedom ignites a fire that spans from the marble corridors of Rome to the…

Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
Walter Savage Landor
The heart, like a heavy stone cast into a still pond, creates ripples that disturb the surface long after the impact. These pages offer a mirror to the past, reflecting the voices of those who shaped our world.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
Herman Melville
A man who values ease and order above all else finds his life upended by a quiet, pale stranger who refuses to conform to the expectations of the world.

The World I Live In
Helen Keller
The world is not defined by the limitations of the senses, but by the boundless reach of the mind. Discover how a life lived in silence and darkness can become a vibrant, tactile tapestry of human experience.

Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War
George Alfred Townsend
The thunder of distant cannon fire and the quiet rot of a farm in ruins frame the intimate, restless observations of a witness to a nation tearing itself apart.

Pamphlets and Parodies on Political Subjects
William Hone
A nation’s grievances, once bottled, must eventually find a way to vent. Through biting wit and the borrowed structures of nursery rhyme and liturgy, a singular voice dismantles the facade of Regency power with relentless, rhythmic precision.

The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism
Franz Cumont
As the Roman Empire expanded, the ancient deities of the West began to fade, replaced by a tide of fervent mysteries flowing from the East. This shifting spiritual landscape ultimately cleared the path for the rise of Christianity.

In Kings' Byways
Stanley John Weyman
The stakes of history are often hidden in the quiet corners where ordinary men face extraordinary choices. These tales trace the path of honor through the shadows of the French monarchy, where a single decision can mean life, death, or the making of a legend.

The Ten Books on Architecture
Vitruvius Pollio
To build a structure that endures is to participate in the natural order of the universe, where the proportions of a temple mirror the symmetry of the human body itself.