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All free summaries — page 249
13,367 public-domain books, summarised. Page 249 of 279.
The Book of Elves and Fairies for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Children's Own Reading
Frances Jenkins Olcott
Encountering magical creatures in midnight glades and hidden underground mines reveals a world where human virtue is rewarded and foolish greed meets its swift undoing. <Image alt="Front cover of the vintage book The Book of Elves and Fairies" caption="A classic treasury of fairy lore."…
The Child's Book of Nature: Three parts in one
Worthington Hooker
A patient, systematic guide to the physical world shows children how to read the secrets hidden in ordinary plants, animals, and natural forces.
The nutrition of man
R. H. (Russell Henry) Chittenden
A scientific challenge to centuries of dietary tradition demonstrates that human bodies require far less daily protein than standard medical wisdom dictates, proving that true physical health thrives on systematic physiological moderation.
The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry, with Legends of the Surrounding Country
Joseph Barry
Where the Shenandoah meets the Potomac, national destiny, regional myth, and human eccentricities converge in a violent and unpredictable American history.
The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story
Ethel Turner
A young musical prodigy conquers London, but her glittering success cannot shield her struggling Australian family from the harsh realities of debt, bush fire, and war.
Billy Bunny and Daddy Fox
David Cory
A young rabbit roams from woodpiles to theater boxes, dodging predators with popguns and absurd luck.
English and Scottish Ballads, Volume V
Unknown
A broad collection of folk ballads captures the legendary exploits, violent skirmishes, and merry camaraderie of England’s most famous greenwood outlaw and his forest companions.
Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions
Slason Thompson
A genius of absurd humor and tender verse lives a life as unpredictable, contradiction-filled, and utterly rebellious as his own stories.
In His Image
William Jennings Bryan
A passionate, uncompromising defense of traditional Christian belief seeks to dismantle the rising tides of modern secularism, higher criticism, and evolutionary theory. Driven by a conviction that human morality collapses without a divine foundation, this work addresses the modern world with an urgent call to…
Lord Tony's Wife: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
A vengeful survivor of the French Revolution pursues an exiled nobleman’s daughter to England, orchestrating a deceitful plot that lures her back into the jaws of the Terror.
Stories of Useful Inventions
S. E. (Samuel Eagle) Forman
Humanity's climb from primitive survival to modern mastery relies on fifteen quiet everyday objects, each evolving through centuries of slow ingenuity.
Story Hour Readers
Ida Coe
Classic folktales, mythic origins, and timeless poetry merge into a gently structured gateway to the wonder of the written word.
The Battleship Boys at Sea
Frank Gee Patchin
Driven by high-minded patriotism and sheer restless energy, two small-town American teenagers enlist in the modern steel navy and discover that earning respect aboard a dreadnought requires equal parts courage, iron discipline, and raw grit.
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
Unknown
Driven by high idealism, political betrayal, and tragic fate, historical heroes and tormented thinkers battle for human freedom across grand dramatic canvases and poetic landscapes.
The Unbearable Bassington
Saki
A glittering, sharp-edged satire of Edwardian society that turns without warning into a heartbreaking tragedy of youth wasted and love withheld.
Bohemian Paris of To-day: Second Edition
W. C. Morrow
A young American art student plunges into the crowded ateliers, shadowy cabarets, and raucous student balls of late-nineteenth-century Paris, discovering a world where creative ambition is inseparable from pinching poverty, boisterous spectacle, and the relentless search for artistic identity.
Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Vol. 2)
Frances Milton Trollope
A vivid portrait of Parisian life, society, and politics in the 1830s, penned by a keen observer of French culture.
Moorish Remains in Spain
Albert Frederick Calvert
The art of the Spanish Moors survives not as a dead relic, but as an enduring marvel of geometry, light, and architectural devotion.
The counterfeiters
André Gide
Boundaries dissolve when secret parentage, illegitimate desire, and literary ambitions collide across the drawing rooms and alleys of early twentieth-century Paris, forcing a tightly knit circle of young men and their families to confront their most carefully guarded lies.
The dissolution of the monasteries
Francis Aidan Hibbert
The story of how Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries reshaped England, told through the lens of Staffordshire.
The Invaders, and Other Stories
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
An observer seeking truth among soldiers, drivers, peasants, and noblemen encounters human vulnerability, vanity, and grace across Russia’s vast landscapes and brutal conflicts.
A Cotswold Village
J. Arthur (Joseph Arthur) Gibbs
In the heart of the Gloucestershire wolds, country life unfolds through quiet trout streams, centuries-old limestone manors, and the timeless rhythms of rural sport and village fellowship.
A Logic of Facts
George Jacob Holyoake
Clear, rigorous thinking should be accessible to everyone, yet traditional logic often buries practical truth beneath endless scholastic jargon and complex abstractions.
Babylonian and Assyrian Literature
Unknown
Carved into clay and preserved across millennia, these ancient Mesopotamian texts offer an unvarnished window into the fears, devotions, and triumphs of an empire.
Chats on Old Miniatures
J. J. (Joshua James) Foster
An instructive and elegant survey of miniature painting, this guide leads the reader through centuries of delicate art with discerning taste, historical acumen, and deep respect for the vanishing craft.
Dawn O'Hara: The Girl Who Laughed
Edna Ferber
A spirited journalist navigates love, loss, and self-discovery in the charming chaos of boarding house life.
Experience
Catherine (Catherine M.) Cotton
A sunlit home in a dark world can be the sweetest comfort or the sharpest ache when war breaks in.
Greek dress
Ethel Beatrice Abrahams
A clear-eyed archæological study traces how simple woven rectangles transformed into the iconic, draped garments of classic antiquity.
Hector Graeme
Evelyn Brentwood
A dark portrait of pride and military genius, showing how ambition and emotional blindness can destroy a brilliant career from within.
Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 03 (of 15), Spanish American
Charles Morris
A sweeping canvas of ambition and bloodshed, this historic survey spans three centuries of conquest, piratical raids, and revolutionary struggles across the vast landscapes of Spanish America.
Jimbo: A Fantasy
Algernon Blackwood
An imaginative boy, struck down in a sudden accident, awakens inside a strange gothic dreamscape where his fear and his yearning for flight wage a battle for his soul.
Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition
Arthur Stanley Turberville
A historical investigation into the medieval mind reveals how the relentless drive for religious conformity gave birth to organized tribunals and reshaped European justice.
Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay
Amy Fay
A young American woman arrives in imperial Germany with a modest piano technique and a quiet dream, only to find her hand broken down and rebuilt key by key by the greatest musical minds of the nineteenth century.
My Path to Atheism
Annie Besant
A intellectual journey from devout Anglican faith to unyielding secularism shows how rigorous biblical scrutiny can dissolve long-held religious dogmas.
Nineteenth Century Questions
James Freeman Clarke
A collection of sharp mid-nineteenth-century essays dissects the friction between faith, literature, and social change, offering a calm, reasoned defense of human progress against dogmatism and intellectual excess.
Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States: Published During Its Discussion by the People 1787-1788
Unknown
In the tense months following the 1787 Constitutional Convention, American citizens took to the press in a fierce public debate over whether to ratify the nation's new blueprint for government.
Pintoricchio
Evelyn March Phillipps
Pintoricchio transforms church walls into vibrant tapestries of narrative and color, proving that decorative grace can sometimes triumph over the cold precision of structural science.
Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing
William Walker Atkinson
Every human mind possesses latent senses capable of reaching past physical barriers to observe hidden objects, distant places, forgotten history, and future events. Disciplined mental exercises systematically unlock these innate psychic faculties for practical everyday illumination.
Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy
J. R. (Joseph Robson) Tanner
An exacting administrative study strips away the legendary diarist's romantic gloss, revealing a pragmatic bureaucratic strategist who built the operational engine of seventeenth-century British naval power.
Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879: A Weekly Journal of Practical Information, Art, Science
Various
A rare glimpse into nineteenth-century ingenuity captures an era when industrial ambition, theoretical physics, and grassroots tinkering collided to shape the modern landscape.
Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice
Edward A. (Edward Augustus) Freeman
A maritime empire's shadow stretches across coastal fortresses, ancient basilicas, and mountain borders, revealing where Western Europe ends and the Slavic world begins.
Stray leaves from strange literature
Lafcadio Hearn
Across ancient sands, tropical oceans, and haunted streets, distant mythologies converge into eerie, beautiful visions of mortal longing and eternal decay.
The American Missionary
Various
A collection of reports, letters, and financial receipts reveals how Northern reformers and Southern Freedmen built schools, churches, and civic institutions during Reconstruction.
The Book of Nature: Containing information for young people who think of getting married, on the philosophy of procreation and sexual intercourse, showing how to prevent conception and to avoid child-bearing: also, rules for management during labor and child-birth
Ashton, James, active 1875-1876
A candid mid-nineteenth-century medical manual reveals how Victorian Americans sought to balance intimate passion, reproductive control, and physical health.
The Childrens' Story of the War, Volume 2 (of 10): From the Battle of Mons to the Fall of Antwerp
Edward Parrott
A vivid chronicle of 1914 transforms a world-shattering conflict into an accessible tale of courage, tactical maneuvers, and human resilience across the early battlefields of Europe.
The Head Voice and Other Problems: Practical Talks on Singing
D. A. (David Alva) Clippinger
A thoughtful, practical defense of vocal art over mechanical manipulation, insisting that beautiful tone originates entirely in clear mental concepts and muscular freedom.
The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
Unknown
A sprawling, kaleidoscopic tour through early American comic literature captures the raw, self-deprecating wit and vivid regional accents of a growing nation.
The Luckiest Girl in the School
Angela Brazil
For an energetic slice of early twentieth-century schoolgirl life, look no further than this spirited story of friendship, athletic rivalry, and home-front determination.