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13,367 public-domain books, summarised. Page 264 of 279.

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 19
Robert Louis Stevenson
A haunting collision between the lawless, sun-drenched desperation of the South Seas and the cold, unforgiving morality of the Scottish moors defines these final masterpieces.

To-morrow
Joseph Conrad
A retired sea captain waits for a son who is never coming, while his neighbor’s daughter pays the price for playing along with his delusion.

Winning a Cause: World War Stories
John G. (John Gilbert) Thompson
The courage of the common soldier and the resilience of a nation mobilized for a global struggle define these accounts of a world at war. This collection serves as a historical record of the American spirit during the final, decisive chapters of the conflict that reshaped the twentieth century.

Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet: The Story of a King's Daughter
Elizabeth W. (Elizabeth Williams) Champney
A group of boarding-school friends faces a series of baffling thefts and internal rivalries, only to discover that the most perplexing puzzles are often solved by looking at the furniture rather than the motives of others.

Wives of the Prime Ministers, 1844-1906
Elizabeth Lee
These portraits offer a glimpse into the private lives of women standing behind Britain’s most powerful leaders, exploring how they navigated the complexities of nineteenth-century political and social influence.

A Blundering Boy: A Humorous Story
Bruce Weston Munro
This story follows a perpetually awkward, well-meaning boy whose clumsy mistakes paradoxically lead to moments of heroism and resolution. It captures the frantic, self-important, and often absurd inner world of youth during the late nineteenth century.

A Hoosier holiday
Theodore Dreiser
A restless traveler wanders back to the heartland of his youth, searching for the ghosts of a simpler existence amidst the changing landscape of early twentieth-century America.

A Life for a Life, Volume 3 (of 3)
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
HOOK A tale of long-buried sin and the redemption found in truth, this novel examines the heavy price of atonement and the enduring power of a love that survives total social disgrace.

A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, but Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself
Venture Smith
Born into a royal lineage in Africa, an abducted man navigates decades of brutal servitude in America to purchase his own freedom and reclaim his family through sheer, unrelenting labor.

A Short History of Russia
Mary Platt Parmele
This historical survey explores the evolution of the Russian state as a governing system rather than a unified nation, examining the tension between its autocratic power and its largely passive population.

An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (8 of 8)
Unknown
This collection offers a mosaic of historical accounts, personal narratives, and Elizabethan verse, capturing the texture of English life through the eyes of those who lived it. It is a vital repository for anyone seeking to touch the pulse of a transformative, often turbulent, era.

An Iceland Fisherman
Pierre Loti
This poignant narrative explores the profound, quiet bond between a Breton woman and a fisherman, set against the unforgiving backdrop of the North Sea. It is a haunting portrait of love, loss, and the eternal, indifferent power of the ocean.

Bar-20 Days
Clarence Edward Mulford
The frontier is a place of quick triggers and even quicker wits, where a man’s reputation is his only true currency. In this rugged world, loyalty among the Bar-20 outfit is the only law that holds.

Bobby Blake on a Plantation
Frank A. Warner
The daring rescue of a drowning rival turns into a Southern adventure for three schoolboys, who must navigate dangerous swamps and outwit a cunning land thief to save a family estate.

Buddhist Psalms translated from the Japanese of Shinran Shonin
Shinran
This collection of devotional poetry captures the profound surrender of a seeker who finds ultimate peace not in his own moral accomplishments, but in the boundless mercy of the Infinite. It remains a foundational testament to the Pure Land tradition, articulating a shift from rigorous, self-reliant asceticism to…

Colonel Quaritch, V.C.: A Tale of Country Life
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
A veteran soldier and a proud, land-poor squire’s daughter find their lives intertwined with a ruthless financier in the fading landscape of rural England. Their struggle for home and heart culminates in a desperate search for a hidden family fortune.

Comic Tragedies: Written by 'Jo' and 'Meg' and Acted by The 'Little Women'
Louisa May Alcott
These exuberant, homemade melodramas reveal the secret creative life of a legendary childhood, capturing the earnest intensity of young writers who turned their attic into a stage for grand, sweeping passions.

Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 1 of 2)
B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts
A resolute defense of faith, this collection gathers a lifetime of arguments, historical reflections, and public rebuttals written to vindicate a religion against its fiercest critics at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Elmer Gantry
Sinclair Lewis
A profane, brawling athlete stumbles into the pulpit and discovers that holiness is the most lucrative and exhilarating racket in America. This scathing portrait of a charlatan follows the rise of a man who masterfully exploits the public’s desperate hunger for spiritual certainty.

General Gordon
Seton Churchill
A soldier of immense moral intensity, this biography traces the life of a man whose unconventional genius and devout faith led him from the trenches of the Crimea to a tragic, iconic death in the Soudan.

Handel
Romain Rolland
A masterful portrait of a musical titan, this study traces the relentless creative spirit of a composer who weathered constant rivalries and near-ruin to reshape the landscape of European music.

Hogarth's Works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. Volume 3 (of 3)
John Ireland
HOOK This collection serves as a vivid, anecdotal record of a master satirist’s life and work, documenting the friction between artistic genius and the fickle, often ungrateful public of eighteenth-century England.

"I was there" with the Yanks on the western front, 1917-1919
Cyrus Leroy Baldridge
The Great War is often remembered through the lens of official history or polished monuments, but here it is captured in the weary, unvarnished rhythm of the men who stood in line, slogged through the mud, and waited for the next shell to fall. This intimate chronicle offers a rare perspective on the daily…

In the Land of Mosques & Minarets
M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
Across the Mediterranean from Europe, the sun-drenched landscapes of North Africa offer a complex tapestry of ancient Roman remnants, enduring Islamic traditions, and the encroaching machinery of early twentieth-century French colonial infrastructure. This travelogue serves as a detailed survey of the region’s…

Legends of the Rhine
Wilhelm Ruland
A collection of centuries-old tales, this work captures the romantic spirit and haunting folklore woven into the landscape of the Rhine river valley.

Life and marvelous adventures of Wild Bill, the Scout: being a true an exact history of all the sanguinary combats and hair-breadth escapes of the most famous scout and spy America ever produced
James W. (James William) Buel
HOOK A portrait of the ultimate frontier scout, this account charts the life, lethal precision, and violent end of a man who served as both a lawless wanderer and a necessary instrument of order.

Old Familiar Faces
Theodore Watts-Dunton
These collected recollections offer an intimate, enduring portrait of the great Victorian literary circle, seen through the eyes of one of its most devoted and observant members. They preserve the humanity behind the legendary reputations.

Poems in Prose
Charles Baudelaire
A solitary stroller wanders through city streets and internal landscapes, seeking a new form of expression flexible enough to capture the soul's erratic motions. Across prose vignettes, urban squalor and luminous dreams collide.

Political Women, Vol. 2
Menzies, Sutherland, active 1840-1883
Women of ambition and intellect navigate the treacherous corridors of European power, wielding influence behind thrones to reshape nations and secure their own legacies. This historical study illuminates the intersection of feminine agency and statecraft across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Rambles of an archæologist among old books and in old places
F. W. (Frederick William) Fairholt
This collection of antiquarian essays invites readers to wander through the forgotten corners of medieval art, from the hidden symbolism of ancient rings to the intricate craftsmanship of Renaissance metalwork.

Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891
Various
This late-nineteenth-century technical periodical serves as a vital snapshot of an era defined by rapid industrial expansion, mechanical ingenuity, and the confident application of scientific principles to the problems of daily life.

Second Plays
A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne
This collection presents five plays that explore the quiet intersection of domestic life and the unexpected intrusion of romance, mystery, or social friction. Through sharp dialogue and a penchant for gentle subversion, the writing highlights the absurdity hidden within the ordinary habits of the British…

Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania
Wilhelm Meinhold
Sidonia von Bork, a noblewoman of striking beauty and relentless spite, descends into a life of dark obsession after the ducal house of Pomerania repeatedly spurns her. Her path from a court favorite to a condemned sorceress becomes a tragic spiral of revenge, magic, and the systematic undoing of a royal dynasty.

Sir Mortimer: A Novel
Mary Johnston
A disgraced knight seeks redemption for a catastrophic wartime failure that cost him his honor, his comrades, and the woman he loves.

Ten months in a German raider
John Stanley Cameron
This is a harrowing, plain-spoken account of a merchant captain and his family held captive for ten months on a German raider during the First World War. It is a rare, intimate look at the surreal, claustrophobic life of prisoners-of-war at sea.

The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890
Various
This collection of reports, technical notes, and architectural critiques captures the professional pulse of the American building industry at the dawn of the 1890s. It provides a granular look at the craftsmanship, controversies, and aesthetic debates that defined a period of rapid urban transformation.

The Arena, Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891
Various
This periodical offers a vital snapshot of late nineteenth-century American thought, capturing a nation grappling with industrial strife, social reform, and the shifting boundaries of religious and political identity.

The Crisis of the Naval War
John Rushworth Jellicoe
This professional retrospective examines the strategic shift from defensive patrol to the convoy system, revealing how the Royal Navy finally strangled the German U-boat threat during the final years of the Great War.

The Cross of Berny
Théophile Gautier
A journey through the wreckage of four intertwined lives, this epistolary chronicle captures the fragile intersection of vanity, romantic obsession, and the devastating cost of misreading the human heart.

The Faith of Men
Jack London
The Far North provides a brutal, unforgiving stage where human nature is stripped to its barest essentials. Here, morality shifts like the drifts, and survival becomes the only absolute law.

The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tails
Kathleen Gray Nelson
The quest for status can be a heavy burden, as one vain creature learns when his long-awaited transformation brings only isolation and physical decay.

The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University
Robert Peter
Transylvania University’s medical school was once the academic heart of the American West, a beacon of scientific ambition that flourished in Lexington before fading into history. This account reconstructs the rise and eventual dissolution of that storied institution through the eyes of one of its own faculty.

The Last Link: Our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man
Ernst Haeckel
The study of human origins serves as the ultimate diagnostic for understanding our place in the natural world. By tracing the biological lineage of humanity, we uncover the mechanical and evolutionary forces that shaped the modern form.

The Life of Jesus of Nazareth: A Study
Rush Rhees
This systematic study offers a careful, scholarly examination of the ministry and person of Jesus, bridging historical inquiry with a deep respect for the gospel narratives. It provides a measured look at a life that defined an era.

The Life of Napoleon I (Volume 1 of 2)
J. Holland (John Holland) Rose
This biographical account traces the rise of a singular force of nature, examining how an ambitious Corsican officer dismantled the old monarchies of Europe to reshape the continent in his own image.

The Little Minister
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A young minister faces the clash between his strict, dogmatic congregation and the wild, unpredictable pull of his own heart. This tale of devotion, secrets, and forbidden love unfolds against the rugged backdrop of a nineteenth-century Scottish weaving village.

The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
These records offer a window into the evolving mind of a man navigating the precarious divide between personal loyalty and the hardening fault lines of a nation. They capture the steady, deliberate movement of a political figure shifting from local concerns to the moral stakes of the national stage.

The Potter and the Clay: A Romance of Today
Maud Howard Peterson
A haunting exploration of human frailty, this novel follows two cousins whose lifelong bond is shattered when cowardice and duty collide in the harsh crucible of British India.