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All free summaries — page 280
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 280 of 714.
Sam
E. J. Rath
A wealthy heiress, stranded on an island in the St. Lawrence River, accepts a ride from a questionable local boatman and finds herself drawn into a web of stolen jewels, false identities, and unexpected romance.
A Popular Schoolgirl
Angela Brazil
An overdue move, a lost family fortune, and a fiercely proud girl trying to navigate high school while keeping her private struggles hidden from her wealthy peers.
A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time
Caine, Hall, Sir
A dark family secret, a stolen inheritance, and a devious double threaten to destroy a young couple’s future in the rugged Cumbrian fells.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
Various
An eclectic mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany brings together European travelogues, Caucasian military adventures, art historical debates, romantic fiction, Victorian science, and high-stakes international trade policy.
Four Hundred Humorous Illustrations: With Portrait and Biographical Sketch
Unknown
A young artist’s extraordinary talent for observation transforms the landscape of Victorian caricature, eventually capturing the spirit of a nation before his own intense sensitivity to the world leads to a premature end.
Gammer Gurton's Needle
Unknown
A lost sewing needle throws an entire sixteenth-century village into chaos, sparking bitter feuds, broken heads, and wild accusations.
Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3: containing a collection of curious travels, voyages, and natural histories of countries as they have been delivered in to the Royal Society
Royal Society (Great Britain)
This collection captures a pivotal era of discovery, where the expanding horizons of the seventeenth-century world were cataloged with the urgent curiosity of an emerging scientific age. It serves as a repository for the reports of travelers, merchants, and scholars who sought to map both the physical geography and…
Proportional Representation Applied to Party Government: A New Electoral System
T. R. (Thomas Ramsden) Ashworth
A rigid, two-party political structure is not an unfortunate compromise of modern democracy, but the essential engine of human progress.
The Case of Richard Meynell
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A reformist English clergyman risks his living and his repute to transform his ancestral Church from within, only to face a ruinous public scandal when his enemies unearth a long-buried secret.
The Mormon Prophet and His Harem
C. V. (Catherine Van Valkenburg) Waite
An uncompromising nineteenth-century exposure reveals the political machinations, total authoritarian control, and structural reality of polygamy inside Brigham Young’s Utah Territory, warning an exhausted nation of a second impending rebellion.
The Myths and Fables of To-Day
Samuel Adams Drake
A dark cat darting across a quiet hallway, a horseshoe nailed over a doorway, or a sudden shiver at a dinner table of thirteen—these ordinary moments carry the ancient, quiet weight of human fear and hope.
The Story of Isaac Brock: Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812
Walter R. Nursey
An undaunted commander rallies a fragile colony against overwhelming odds, transforming a desperate border defense into the foundation of a nation's identity.
The Thames
G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
Bright parasols, painted boats, and dark cedars against a turquoise sky give way to thundering green weir waters and rain-soaked paths as a midsummer journey traces the sweeping curves of England's primary waterway.
The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays
Walter Ben Hare
A collection of festive, accessible scripts offers performers of all ages a clear path to stage-ready holiday warmth, humor, and reverence.
Theory and practice of the confessional
Caspar E. (Caspar Erich) Schieler
A judge, shepherd, physician, and father must walk a narrow, delicate line between absolute canonical rigor and profound human mercy.
Bedouins: : Mary Garden, Debussy, Chopin or the circus, Botticelli, Poe, Brahmsody, Anatole France, Mirbeau, Caruso on wheels, Calico cats, The artistic temperament
James Huneker
An observant critic explores the fragile, brilliant lives of artists who wander outside the conventional bounds of society. He studies the fire and discipline required to turn raw temperament into enduring creation.
Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters
Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand) Sabin
A frontier chronicle of nerve, gunpowder, and grit.
Claudian, volume 2 (of 2): With an English translation by Maurice Platnauer
Claudius Claudianus
Majestic panegyrics and glowing mythologies capture the final twilight of classical Rome, celebrating imperial victories while painting vivid pictures of ancient gods.
De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars
Thomas De Quincey
A grand historical exodus becomes a theatrical spectacle as an entire nation flees Russian oppression across thousands of miles of brutal, unforgiving desert.
Poems 1918-21, Including Three Portraits and Four Cantos
Ezra Pound
A modern poet wanders through classical Rome, medieval Provence, and post-war London, discarding grand imperial ambitions to capture fleeting moments of beauty, desire, and intellectual frustration.
Sinking of the "Titanic" : most appalling ocean horror
Jay Henry Mowbray
This contemporary account captures the raw horror, chaotic rescue, and profound grief surrounding the world's most infamous maritime tragedy before history could turn it into myth.
Studies in modern music, second series
W. H. (William Henry) Hadow
A deep, rigorous investigation into how technical structure and historical identity intersect to define the highest achievements of European classical composition.
The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use: 'The Strad' Library, No. III
Henry Saint-George
An indispensable companion to the violin, the bow transformed a crude wooden box into an instrument capable of echoing the nuance, passion, and subtlety of the human voice.
The Career of Katherine Bush
Elinor Glyn
A young woman of lower-middle-class origins resolves to rise into the highest ranks of Edwardian society using sheer intellect, absolute self-control, and calculated ambition.
The Life of the Caterpillar
Jean-Henri Fabre
A quiet observer in a Provençal garden watches caterpillars march, weave, and transform, discovering that the humblest creature’s daily routine holds profound secrets of instinct, climate, and life’s broader order.
Travels in Western Australia: being a description of the various cities and towns, goldfields, and agricultural districts of that state
May Vivienne
An adventurous traveler traverses a vast, sun-drenched frontier of untouched forests and roaring gold rushes, documenting a rapidly growing society with keen observation and infectious enthusiasm.
All in the same boat
Earle L. Reynolds
A family builds a Japanese yacht to circumnavigate the globe, confronting unpredictable seas, bureaucratic obstacles, and shifting interpersonal dynamics across years of blue-water travel.
Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self
Marie Corelli
A mystical vision on a desolate ancient plain shatters a poet’s worldly skepticism, setting him on a extraordinary journey across time to confront his own forgotten past.
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.