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All free summaries — page 278
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 278 of 988.
Backwoods Surgery & Medicine
Charles Stuart Moody
When a simple trip into the wilderness turns catastrophic, knowing how to set a bone with a cedar branch or neutralize a rattlesnake bite can mean the difference between life and death.
Revolt of the Outworlds
Stephen Marlowe
Deep in the desert under the Martian sand, a dead leader's legacy becomes the weapon in a ruthless plot to destroy Earth.
Secret Service: Being the Happenings of a Night in Richmond in the Spring of 1865
Cyrus Townsend Brady
A officer risks everything behind enemy lines, only to find that the hardest mission is choosing between a soldier's duty and a quiet love born in the shadows of a doomed city.
The Drunkard
Guy Thorne
A brilliant poet surrenders his soul to inherited dipsomania, destroying his art and his marriage in a tragic descent toward murder and spiritual ruin.
The Heart of Scotland
A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope) Moncrieff
A land of jagged glens, ancient feuds, and misty lakes reveals itself as the essential pulse of a nation’s history, culture, and enduring romantic imagination.
The homosexual in literature
Noel I. Garde
A pioneering 1959 reference work maps over two thousand years of gay literary representation, providing an meticulous blueprint of how male homosexuality moved from classical shadows into modern print.
A Reading Book in Irish History
P. W. (Patrick Weston) Joyce
Through mythic transformations, tragic betrayals, monastic devotion, and high-stakes feuds, the foundational lore of an ancient island comes vividly alive.
Disputed Handwriting: An exhaustive, valuable, and comprehensive work upon one of the most important subjects of to-day. With illustrations and expositions for the detection and study of forgery by handwriting of all kinds
Jerome Buell Lavay
A pen stroke leaves behind more than simple letters; it captures the subtle physical mechanics and unconscious habits of the human hand.
Essays in medical sociology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Elizabeth Blackwell
In an era that reduced human sexuality to biological mechanics or social taboos, a pioneering female physician insists that body and spirit are inseparable—and that true social medicine must begin with a single, unyielding moral standard for all.
Five Lectures on Blindness
Kate M. Foley
A fierce, clear-eyed advocate steps out of the darkness to challenge the prejudices of the sighted world, proving that loss of vision does not mean the end of a purposeful, independent life.
Guy Fawkes
Thomas Lathbury
Religious fanaticism and political intrigue collide in this sharp 1839 chronicle, which traces how a radicalized network of conspirators plotted to obliterate the English government and why their ideological legacy echoed across centuries.
History of the United States
John Clark Ridpath
A continent’s destiny unfolds through wilderness encounters, revolutionary fervors, and fragile reconciliations as a nascent nation marches relentlessly from wild frontier to industrial titan.
Home Life in Tokyo
Jukichi Inouye
A native resident reveals the intimate structures of a rapidly modernizing capital, where centuries of domestic tradition quietly resist the tide of Western influence.
Maxim Gorki
Hans Ostwald
A penniless vagrant rises from the lowest strata of Russian society to become the defining literary voice of a nation on the brink of revolution.
Poems in Two Volumes, Volume 2
William Wordsworth
A quiet, reflective journey through mountain landscapes and inner memories reveals how simple moments of everyday life can grow into enduring spiritual truths.
Records of the Kirk of Scotland: containing the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies from 1638 downwards, as authenticated by the clerks of assembly
Church of Scotland. General Assembly
A nation's struggle to reclaim its religious self-determination unfolds through the rigorous, official record of its highest ecclesiastical court.
Sicily in Shadow and in Sun: The Earthquake and the American Relief Work
Maud Howe Elliott
Amid the physical and psychological ruins of a devastating natural disaster, two nations forge an extraordinary bond of human empathy through hands-on emergency relief.
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A cross-cultural tapestry woven with subversion, sharp wit, and dark comedy.
The Business of Being a Housewife: A Manual to Promote Household Efficiency and Economy
Leona A. (Leona Alford) Malek
A structured guide to early twentieth-century home management shows how systemic organization, smart market choices, and precise culinary techniques can transform chaotic domestic labor into a streamlined, economical enterprise.
The Great Cattle Trail
Edward Sylvester Ellis
When Comanche raiders besiege an isolated Texas cabin, a boy's bravery on a northbound trail ride becomes his family’s only hope for survival.
The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women
Elizabeth Cooper
A secluded world of domestic tradition, religious devotion, and quiet strength yields its secrets as an observant Western traveller steps past the veiled thresholds of early twentieth-century Eastern homes.
The Lunatic at Large
J. Storer (Joseph Storer) Clouston
An escaped asylum patient effortlessly assumes new identities, outwits aristocrats across England, and turns every absurd turn of fortune into a hilarious social victory.
The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace
Horace
A delicate, rigorous verse translation captures the quiet ironies, domestic warmth, and public duties of Rome’s most celebrated lyric voice.
The Outlet
Andy Adams
Moving thousands of cattle across a changing continent turns out to be less about the trail and more about the backroom deals, crooked inspectors, and pure physical grit required to open up the West.
The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 2
William Lisle Bowles
A reflective journey through memory, faith, and the quiet beauty of the English countryside awaits within these verse collections.
The Rush for the Spoil (La Curée): A Realistic Novel
Émile Zola
Speculation, luxury, and betrayal shape a ruined woman’s gilded life in Second Empire Paris.
What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants
Edwin Bryant
Across the vast and uncharted expanse of 1840s North America lies a fertile territory poised on the brink of transformation, documented with meticulous clarity by a observer who lived its pivotal moments.
Yorkshire—Coast and Moorland Scenes
Gordon Home
A rugged ribbon of road leads away toward the desolate heights, inviting the curious traveler to leave behind civilized towns and lose themselves among the vast, purple-capped heather.
A Literary & Historical Atlas of America
J. G. (John George) Bartholomew
A coordinate grid lays bare the vast shape of the Western Hemisphere, anchoring centuries of exploration, bloody encounters, and human ambitions to exact lines of latitude and longitude.
Adventures in Swaziland: The Story of a South African Boer
Owen Rowe O'Neil
In the shadow of the Drakensberg mountains, a young Boer boy learns that survival on the South African veldt requires understanding both the harsh law of his people and the bloody court of the Swazi kings.
"Buffalo Bill" from Prairie to Palace: An Authentic History of the Wild West
John M. Burke
Before the footlights of European courts and American cities, a former plainsman transforms the bloody realities of the Western frontier into the world’s most celebrated theatrical spectacle.
Horrors of vaccination exposed and illustrated
Chas. M. (Charles Michael) Higgins
A treatise against state-mandated medical procedures argues that bodily autonomy is a foundational civil right. It asserts that forced inoculations spread deadly animal contagions, corrupting public health under the guise of disease prevention.
Hunter Quatermain's Story
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
An African wilderness hunt turns disastrously sour, leaving a veteran woodsman and his companions stripped of all supplies and forced into a harrowing trek toward safety.
Lord Chatham, His Early Life and Connections
Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of
Crippled by inherited gout and driven by theatrical ambition, a young cornet of horse maneuvers through political factions to seize the destiny of an empire.
My Aunt Margaret's Mirror
Walter Scott
A quiet walk through a changing Scottish landscape opens into a haunted parlor where long-dead grievances, forbidden magic, and family betrayals are brought into the light.
The Black Moose in Pennsylvania
Henry W. (Henry Wharton) Shoemaker
A mammoth beast once roamed the high ridges of the Alleghenies, leaving its mark on the land before vanishing into mountain legend.
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A young man wanders through 18th-century Europe, guided less by reason than by intense passions, unvarnished eccentricities, and an insatiable desire to understand his own heart.
The Curse of Koshiu: A Chronicle of Old Japan
Lewis Wingfield
A doomed family's blood-soaked tyranny crumbles under a executed farmer’s curse, tearing apart brotherly bonds, imperial court politics, and a land pushed to the brink of collapse.
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
William Graham Sumner
A quiet, relentless defense of individual liberty, this essay collection exposes how well-meaning state interventions invariably penalize the quiet, industrious citizen to subsidize politically favored groups.
The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 5 (of 7)
Arthur Thomas Malkin
History is shaped not by abstract forces, but by the precise, often flawed decisions of individuals. From the laboratories of Parisian chemists to the turbulent parliaments of England, human progress is driven by brilliant, contradictory minds.
The History of Burke and Hare, and of the Resurrectionist Times: A Fragment from the Criminal Annals of Scotland
George Mac Gregor
Driven by the lucrative demands of early nineteenth-century medical schools, two men in Edinburgh turned from grave robbing to cold-blooded murder to supply dissecting tables with fresh human corpses.
The Ivory Child
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
An old shadow lengthens across the English countryside, drawing an African hunter back to the brush in search of a stolen noblewoman, a ivory idol, and an ancient monster that demands a final accounting.
The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas
Frederick Marryat
A exiled French youth travels from European courtly exile into the heart of the nineteenth-century American wilderness, navigating Indian nations, political betrayals, and the lawless frontiers of North America.
A Dominie in Doubt
Alexander Sutherland Neill
This is a restless, searching inquiry into the nature of freedom and authority in the classroom, written by a teacher who is perpetually questioning his own methods.
Betty Wales, Freshman
Edith K. (Edith Kellogg) Dunton
A sheltered girl ventures into the boisterous world of college life, discovering that navigating friendships and faculty expectations is far more challenging—and rewarding—than her initial naivety suggests.
Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation
Maria Parloa
This guide serves as a practical manual for the art of preserving the harvest, offering scientifically grounded methods for canning, jelly-making, and syrup preparation. It transforms the kitchen into a space of both health and industry.
Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying Reptiles
H. G. (Harry Govier) Seeley
These ancient, winged reptiles occupy a mysterious middle ground between the cold-blooded lizard and the soaring bird. This account reconstructs their history through the enduring language of their fossilized bones.
Fifty Years a Detective: 35 Real Detective Stories
Thomas Furlong
The law is a blunt instrument, and justice, as one veteran operative learns, is often a matter of patience, carefully placed informants, and the grim reality of a well-aimed bullet.