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All free summaries — page 26
1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 26 of 31.
Journey to a woman
Ann Bannon
A stifled wife leaves her suburban life to chase a memory, only to find the past is a phantom and the path ahead is paved with strangers and shadows.
The Book of the National Parks
Robert Sterling Yard
The American landscape is a vast, living manuscript, with every mountain peak and canyon floor serving as a syllable in the story of the continent’s dramatic making.
The Scarlet Feather
Houghton Townley
The secret of an old man’s wealth and his daughter’s desperate deception threatens to shatter a family’s standing in the high society of New York.
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 09
Unknown
The sixteenth century shatters the medieval world, setting the stage for modern empires, religious schism, and the scientific reordering of the heavens.
The Branding Iron
Katharine Newlin Burt
A woman’s past is a burning mark she cannot outrun, even when she trades the isolation of the frontier for the blinding lights of the stage.
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece
Unknown
The pursuit of wisdom often begins by looking backward, where the voices of the past offer a mirror to our own enduring struggles and joys.
The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon
J. M. (Joseph Maria) Gordon
HOOK A Victorian soldier’s life unfolds across continents—from the disciplined halls of Woolwich to the wilds of Australia and the battlefields of South Africa—revealing the making of a modern military man and the forging of a new nation’s defense.
Despair's Last Journey
David Christie Murray
HOOK In the twilight of the nineteenth century, a man broken by love, ambition, and loss retreats to the silent mountains to confront his shattered past—and discovers that despair is not an end, but a difficult journey toward redemption.
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920
Various
A single volume moves from schoolrooms and courtrooms to maroon communities, border crossings, and Reconstruction politics. Its voice is part archive, part argument, and never lets the records sit still.
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life
Arthur Schopenhauer
The weight of a person’s existence rests not on what they possess or how they are perceived, but on the irreducible quality of their own mind. Happiness is not a stroke of luck, but a deliberate architecture.
Albert Gallatin
John Austin Stevens
A brilliant, uncompromising mind finds its home in the raw soil of early America, shaping the financial bedrock of a new republic through the sheer force of clarity and iron-willed administrative reform.
Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise and Otherwise: With a Study
Thomas Washington Talley
These rhythmic echoes of a vanished world preserve the wit, warnings, and wild imagination of African American life as it once hummed in the fields, kitchens, and cabins of the American South.
A New Guide for Emigrants to the West
John Mason Peck
HOOK A detailed, practical guide to the vast Mississippi River Valley and Northwest territories in the early 19th century, blending geography, history, climate, and social life to prepare emigrants for life in the American West.
Hurricane Island
H. B. Marriott (Henry Brereton Marriott) Watson
A yacht voyage turns into a desperate struggle for survival when mutiny and treachery strike far from civilization, forcing strangers into an uneasy alliance on a remote island.
The possessed
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A provincial Russian town becomes the stage for a dark, turbulent drama of political fanaticism, moral decay, and spiritual crisis, where idealism and nihilism collide with devastating consequences.
Bird of Paradise
Ada Leverson
A delicate web of love, jealousy, and social expectation unfolds among intertwined lives in Edwardian London, where charm and restraint mask deeper passions and conflicts.
A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
A series of vivid, interwoven tales explore the swift passions, complex social customs, and quiet struggles of American life in the early 20th century, revealing moments of love, conflict, and transformation beneath everyday surfaces.
The Trail of the Goldseekers: A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse
Hamlin Garland
HOOK A grueling journey through wild, untamed northern landscapes reveals the harsh realities and fleeting hopes of goldseekers chasing fortune in the far reaches of Alaska and the Yukon.
Plays
Susan Glaspell
A quiet farmhouse conceals a dark secret, a remote college wrestles with its legacy, and a locked conservatory becomes a battleground of wills—three plays that explore the tensions between isolation and connection, tradition and change.
Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula
Walter William Skeat
HOOK A deep exploration of Malay folklore, magic, and popular religion reveals a world where spirits, charms, and ancient rites shape daily life and belief across the Malay Peninsula.
Major Vigoureux
Arthur Quiller-Couch
On a remote island ruled by money and custom, a retired officer discovers that duty, pride, and love can still collide with force.
Northern Travel: Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland
Bayard Taylor
Winter turns the Baltic into a trap, summer turns Lapland into a race against frost, and every stop reveals a different face of the North.
Auction of To-day
Milton C. (Milton Cooper) Work
Master the art and science of auction bridge bidding with a detailed guide that reshapes how players communicate strength, suit preference, and strategy at the card table.
The Flag
Homer Greene
A school flag becomes the center of pride, shame, and hard-earned belonging as one boy learns that patriotism asks for more than cheers.
A Portrait of Old George Town
Grace Dunlop Peter
Step into the layered past of a once-independent town where history, architecture, and personal stories intertwine to reveal the soul of a community absorbed by a growing capital.
The Argonautica
Rhodius Apollonius
A perilous voyage, divine intrigues, and a quest for a golden treasure weave together a tale of heroism, magic, and tragic love on the ancient seas.
The Watchers of the Trails: A Book of Animal Life
Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
HOOK A masterwork of North American nature writing, this collection captures the brutal, beautiful, and silent dramas of the deep woods, where the pulse of life depends on the keenness of the senses.
Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty
Josephine Daskam Bacon
HOOK A man of fifty recounts the passionate, turbulent journey of Margarita, a fiercely independent woman whose life intertwines with love, fate, and exile across continents and social divides.
The Principles of English Versification
Paull F. (Paull Franklin) Baum
A poem can seem simple on the page and still hide a whole system of pulse, pause, and pressure beneath it. Here the mystery is not what verse says, but how English makes it move.
The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical
Robert Boyle
A rigorous inquiry into the nature of matter challenges long-held chemical doctrines, blending careful experiment with skeptical reasoning to reshape the foundations of natural philosophy.
The Wit of Women: Fourth Edition
Kate Sanborn
Discover a vibrant tapestry of humor, wit, and sharp insight woven by women across centuries, revealing their overlooked brilliance in laughter and satire.
The Dark Tower
Phyllis Bottome
A brittle marriage, a fierce wartime friendship, and a love that arrives too late pull one man from privilege into sacrifice. Beneath the surfaces of society and duty, tenderness keeps breaking through.
Nights in London
Thomas Burke
Step into the gaslit shadows of Edwardian London, where the air smells of fog, fry-shops, and adventure. Thomas Burke charts a lyrical, visceral journey through the city’s secret pulses and midnight melodies.
The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I
Charles Darwin
Explore the intricate changes in domestic animals and plants, revealing the subtle forces shaping their diversity and the deep connections between environment, heredity, and human influence.
Charles Frohman: Manager and Man
Isaac Frederick Marcosson
HOOK A portrait of a man who shaped American and English theater with vision, courage, and humanity, tracing the rise of Charles Frohman from a determined youth to a legendary theatrical impresario.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake
A fierce, visionary dialogue between opposing forces reveals a radical rethinking of good and evil, reason and energy, in a world where contraries drive human existence and spiritual transformation.
David and the Phoenix
Edward Ormondroyd
HOOK A boy’s mountain climb leads to a startling encounter with a mythical Phoenix, sparking a fantastical journey filled with magical creatures, daring escapes, and a quest for knowledge beyond the ordinary.
Niels Klim's journey under the ground: being a narrative of his wonderful descent to the subterranean lands
Ludvig Holberg
HOOK A vain student falls through one world after another, only to find each place stranger, flatter, and sharper than the last. What begins as an impossible descent turns into a satire of ambition, learning, and power.
The Song Celestial
Arnold, Edwin, Sir
A war prince and a divine charioteer stand between two armies and turn a battlefield into a debate about action, duty, death, and the shape of reality.
The Ocean Wireless Boys and the Naval Code
John Henry Goldfrap
A group of resourceful boys navigate thrilling adventures involving wireless telegraphy, secret codes, and naval intrigue, uncovering mysteries that test their courage and ingenuity on the high seas and beyond.
John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn
Neil Munro
HOOK In the mist-drenched Highlands of the 1640s, a weary soldier returns home only to be swept into the bloody chaos of the Civil War and the devastating invasion of Clan Campbell’s ancestral lands.
The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths
Padraic Colum
A vivid tapestry of gods, giants, heroes, and cosmic battles unfolds in a world where wisdom is won at great cost and the fate of all hangs on the brink of destruction and renewal.
Change in the Village
George Sturt
A quiet English valley witnesses the slow unraveling of a traditional rural life, as old customs, community bonds, and self-reliance give way to economic change and social upheaval.
The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory: (Periods of European Literature, vol. II)
George Saintsbury
Explore the vibrant literary transformation of medieval Europe, where romance flourished and allegory rose, shaping the intellectual and spiritual fabric of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The Watchers of the Plains: A Tale of the Western Prairies
Ridgwell Cullum
A solitary farm on the western plains becomes the fragile heart of a fierce struggle between settlers and Native tribes, where love, loyalty, and survival intertwine under the vast, watchful sky.
The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
A chance encounter on a seaside promenade sparks a quiet, profound exploration of love, loneliness, and the complexities of human connection in a world bound by social conventions.
British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals
J. Ellis Barker
HOOK A detailed, critical exploration of British socialism’s doctrines, policies, and practical proposals reveals the movement’s ambitions, contradictions, and the challenges it poses to established social and economic orders.
When Winter Comes to Main Street
Grant M. (Grant Martin) Overton
A lively survey of contemporary letters turns into something stranger and more revealing: a portrait of a literary world seen from inside its bookshops, reviews, salons, and publishing houses.