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All free summaries — page 278
13,367 public-domain books, summarised. Page 278 of 279.
Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship
Victor Appleton
A brilliant young inventor faces foreign espionage when his latest creation—a massive, heavily armed flying fortress built for national defense—becomes the target of saboteurs.
Woman in Modern Society
Earl Barnes
Evolution drives human development toward specialized, complementary halves, making the search for biological and personal unity the core shaping force of civilization.
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Alice Clark
Centuries of English economic transformation trace a profound shift: as home-centered industries yielded to modern capitalism, women were systematically excluded from productive enterprise and financial independence.
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
A vast granite tableland in the West of England, swept by harsh winds and heavy rains, preserves the traces of ancient human occupation alongside the lives of its modern inhabitants.
Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 2, September, 1905
Various
A tapestry of urban excess, high-stakes finance, and tragic romance captures the glittering surface and dark undercurrents of turn-of-the-century American life.
An Outback Marriage: A Story of Australian Life
A. B. (Andrew Barton) Paterson
A high-spirited young heiress arrives in the Australian bush to claim her estate, only to ignite a fierce range-war over land, legacy, and true identity.
Ancient Rome: The Lives of Great Men
Mary Agnes Hamilton
Ancient Rome survived external enemies through raw endurance, but its internal democracy dissolved under the weight of personal ambition, military genius, and class division.
Animals of the Past
Frederic A. (Frederic Augustus) Lucas
Earth’s ancient past holds a staggering record of forgotten life, preserved only through stony prints, petrified bones, and delicate impressions left behind in soft mud millions of years ago.
Anthropology
A. L. (Alfred Louis) Kroeber
Human culture grows not through sudden, miraculous bounds, but through the slow, interconnected drift of shared inventions, shifting habits, and inherited traits.
Aunt Caroline's Dixieland recipes
Emma McKinney
This collection of traditional Southern recipes codifies the intuitive kitchen wisdom of the old plantation south into precise, accessible instructions for the twentieth-century household.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 06 of 10
John Fletcher
A vibrant collection of Jacobean dramatic works ranges from high-stakes royal tragedies and heroic ancient wars to meta-theatrical comedies and tale of far-flung romantic intrigue.
Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions
Henry Festing Jones
Sun-drenched, episodic, and richly observant, this warm travelogue captures early twentieth-century Sicily not through monumental ruins, but through the vibrant, theatrical lives of its local inhabitants.
Castillo de San Marcos: A Guide to Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Florida
United States. National Park Service
Built on the coquina shores of Saint Augustine, a solitary stone fortress endured pirate raids, imperial sieges, and changing flags over three centuries of struggle for control of North America.
Children of the lens
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
A intergalactic war spanning millions of years culminates in a clash between ultimate mental powers across multiple dimensions and hidden worlds.
Domestic service
Lucy Maynard Salmon
Reforming household labor requires dismantling rigid social hierarchies and placing domestic work on the same scientific and economic footing as any other modern industry.
Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites: Including an Account of the Origin and Nature of Belief in the Supernatural
John Netten Radcliffe
An investigation into human credulity traces how ancient mythologies, optical illusions, and neurological ticks conspire to convert ordinary natural phenomena into ghosts, devils, and mischievous sprites.
From Makin to Bougainville: Marine Raiders in the Pacific War
Jon T. Hoffman
Born from political pressure and elite combat ideals, special amphibious units fight through the Pacific, proving their mettle before institutional expansion renders them obsolete.
History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother
Lucy Smith
A mother records the extraordinary spiritual rise, relentless persecutions, and violent murder of her sons in early nineteenth-century America.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Washington Irving
Washington Irving
A comprehensive roadmap to an expansive literary legacy, organizing decades of American wilderness adventure, European lore, and historical chronicles.
Mr. Punch's Railway Book
Unknown
A chaotic iron track stretches across Victorian Britain, binding highborn snobs, nervous commuters, and pugilistic strangers in shared, noisy, and perpetually delayed compartments.
Niece Catherine
Mary Hampden
When an orphan's integrity collides with her wealthy family's long-standing feud, love and plain dealing prove far more persuasive than gold.
On Sunset Highways: A Book of Motor Rambles in California
Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler) Murphy
An open road through early twentieth-century California reveals a landscape of towering Sierras, sun-baked desert valleys, and fragile historic missions, all experienced through the front seat of a pioneer motor car.
Popular British Ballads, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 (of 4)
Unknown
These traditional verses pull readers straight into a visceral landscape of fierce loyalties, bloody betrayals, tragic romances, and supernatural horrors.
Queens of the Renaissance
M. Beresford Ryley
Six portraits of remarkable women trace the emergence, triumph, and spiritual fracturing of the European Renaissance through the intimate realities of private character and public trial.
Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877: Read in the Senate and House of Representatives May 23, 1878
Pennsylvania. General Assembly. Committee Appointed to Investigate the Railroad Riots in July, 1877
A nation’s rapid industrial expansion collides with its working class, turning miles of rail into a battleground and leaving a major city’s freight yards in ashes.
St. Augustine, Florida's Colonial Capital
J. T. Van Campen
For over three centuries, a single sandy harbor on the Atlantic coast served as the violent, contested frontier of three global empires. It survived massacres, pirate raids, and sieges to become a quiet monument to American antiquity.
Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume I
M. Y. Halidom
In an Elizabethan inn along two English cross-roads, an eclectic club gathers through storm and night to exchange impossible yarns of phantoms, underwater kingdoms, spirit lovers, and ancient curses.
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
Yoné Noguchi
A eighteen-year-old Japanese woman arrives in turn-of-the-century San Francisco with her high-ranking uncle, determined to experience American life firsthand through sharp observation, social posturing, and a series of impulsive domestic experiments.
The censorship of the Church of Rome and its influence upon the production and distribution of literature, volume 1 (of 2)
George Haven Putnam
A bureaucratic history of institutional fear, this study shows how the Catholic Church sought to govern the intellect of Europe through the systematically organized suppression of books.
The Flowing Bowl: A Treatise on Drinks of All Kinds and of All Periods, Interspersed with Sundry Anecdotes and Reminiscences
Edward Spencer
A spirited vintage tour through the world’s potations reveals that behind every draft, potion, and bowl lies a colorful tapestry of human history and indulgence.
The Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert
E. (Eugène) Daumas
A world governed by speed, honor, and precise tradition unfolds across the sun-bleached expanse of the nineteenth-century Algerian desert.
The Little Review, November 1914 (Vol. 1, No. 8)
Various
Radical artists, pacifists, and iconoclasts clash across poetry, drama, and cultural criticism as Europe descends into the devastation of the First World War.
The Ocean Waifs: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea
Mayne Reid
Two castaways on a fragile raft facing the vast Atlantic find unlikely allies, deadly sea creatures, and human depravity in a gripping struggle for survival.
The Russian Army and the Japanese War, Vol. 1 (of 2): Being Historical and Critical Comments on the Military Policy and Power of Russia and on the Campaign in the Far East
A. N. (Alekseĭ Nikolaevich) Kuropatkin
Failure in the Far East was not born on the battlefield, but engineered in the corridors of imperial governance. A former Russian War Minister dissects how strategic complacency, bureaucratic friction, and political miscalculation doomed a major military campaign.
Trees and Shrubs for English Gardens
E. T. (Ernest Thomas) Cook
Dense thickets of arching branches yield to sweeping, winter-resisting evergreen foliage, teaching gardeners how unpruned specimens naturally flourish when allowed space and proper soil.
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series
Unknown
A doorway into the hidden rural world of the Irish West, where the unseen boundary between everyday life and the realm of the supernatural dissolves entirely in the voices of ordinary country people.
Westward with the Prince of Wales
W. Douglas (Wilfrid Douglas) Newton
An ocean liner slicing through grey Atlantic spray carries a press pack into the wake of a youthful royal icon. Across a vast, post-war continent, crowds swarm railway tracks and balconies just to catch a glimpse of the modern world’s most famous smile.
A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 2
Unknown
A woman hides in a labyrinthine home during an invasion, only to face a far more intimate and devastating form of violence from her defender.
A House of Gentlefolk
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
A weary husband returns from self-imposed exile to a quiet provincial estate, hoping to rebuild a tranquil life, only to find his heart tested by the pure, unyielding devotion of a young woman.
A Romany of the Snows, Complete: Being a Continuation of the Personal Histories of "Pierre and His People" and the Last Existing Records of Pretty Pierre
Gilbert Parker
In the frozen vastness of the Canadian North, a wandering outcast moves among trappers, half-breeds, and border-town desperadoes, dispensing a cold, enigmatic justice across a frontier where survival is the only law.
Alice of Old Vincennes
Maurice Thompson
An untamed frontier girl, an imperious British garrison, and a handful of American rebels collide along the flooded banks of the Wabash River.
City of Endless Night
Milo Hastings
A hundred years in the future, a subterranean Berlin flourishes under absolute totalitarian control until an infiltrating outsider unravels its chemical secrets from within.
Demos
George Gissing
A sudden industrial fortune turns a working-class reformer into an ironmaster, setting public ideals on a collision course with personal integrity, social ambition, and the unyielding realities of class in Victorian England.
Homes and How to Make Them
E. C. (Eugene Clarence) Gardner
A series of epistolary exchanges between an opinionated architect and a prospective homeowner strips away Victorian ornament to expose the timeless principles of honest materials, practical design, and sensible living.
Lady Rose's Daughter
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A brilliant, illegitimate woman in Edwardian London leverages her intellect to rule high society from the shadows, only to find her heart torn between a charming, penniless officer and the saintly heir to a dukedom.
Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
Elgin, James Bruce, Earl of
A veteran administrator spends two decades steering the British Empire through volatile crises across the globe, leaving behind a personal record of quiet resolve, strategic diplomacy, and statecraft.
Martin Luther's Large Catechism, translated by Bente and Dau
Martin Luther
A rigorous, plain-spoken guide breaks down essential doctrines into direct lessons on daily living, duty, and spiritual resilience, urging believers to move beyond superficial custom to ground their lives in clear, conscious conviction.
Mary Schweidler, the amber witch: The most interesting trial for witchcraft ever known, printed from an imperfect manuscript by her father, Abraham Schweidler, the pastor of Coserow in the island of Usedom / edited by W. Meinhold
Wilhelm Meinhold
A pastor’s daughter in 17th-century Pomerania discovers a vein of amber to save her starving parish, only to be branded a witch by a vengeful local tyrant and condemned to the pyre.