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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 319 of 714.

Electricity
W. H. (William Henry) McCormick
The mastery of electricity represents a triumph of human ingenuity, transforming the invisible forces of nature into the mechanical and communicative backbone of the modern world. This guide illuminates the path from static curiosity to global infrastructure.

Farmhouse Plans
Wallace Ashby
HOOK Designed to help families build efficient, long-lasting homes, these architectural plans offer a practical roadmap for creating a dwelling that grows alongside the needs of a rural household.

Flowing Gold
Rex Beach
The Texas oil boom transforms a wilderness into a high-stakes arena where sudden fortunes and bitter rivalries collide. A drifter turned operator navigates this volatile landscape, proving that in the quest for gold, the most dangerous wells are often the ones dug by human ambition.

From the Five Rivers
Flora Annie Webster Steel
HOOK These stories capture the vibrant, dust-swept rhythms of Punjab village life, where ancient traditions and modern pressures collide with startling, human intimacy.

Garden Pests in New Zealand: A Popular Manual for Practical Gardeners, Farmers and Schools
David Miller
This manual serves as a definitive guide for identifying and managing the diverse insect populations that inhabit New Zealand’s gardens and farmlands. It offers a clear, practical bridge between scientific entomology and the daily needs of the horticulturist.

Gleanings in Graveyards: A Collection of Curious Epitaphs
Horatio Edward Norfolk
Death is a universal destination, yet the ways we mark our final arrival are as varied, eccentric, and occasionally absurd as the lives we lead. This collection gathers the wit and wonder etched into stone across the graveyards of Great Britain.

How Lisa Loved the King
George Eliot
The story follows a young girl in medieval Sicily whose secret, unrequited love for the King of Aragon leads her to the brink of death, only to be transformed by an act of royal grace. It is a luminous study of the interior life, exploring how devotion can refine the soul even when its object remains perpetually…

Illustrations of political economy, Volume 3 (of 9)
Harriet Martineau
Industrial strife, the failures of charity, and the cycles of rural poverty collide in a series of dramatized economic lessons. These narratives examine how individual choices and systemic pressures shape the lives of the working class.

Introductory American History
Henry Eldridge Bourne
The journey to America begins not on the Atlantic, but in the ruins of ancient temples and the harbors of the Mediterranean, where the foundations of Western civilization were first laid.

Invention and Discovery: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches
Anonymous
Curious minds will find a treasure trove of scientific anecdotes, historical quirks, and mechanical marvels gathered in this collection of informative sketches. It serves as a fascinating bridge between the intellectual pursuits of the past and the enduring questions of human innovation.

Japanese Swords
Yamanaka & Company
A technical examination of the Japanese sword, tracing its transition from a martial emblem to a coveted object of art following the social upheaval of the 1868 Restoration.

John Dough and the Cherub
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
The life of a baker’s creation is short, but for one gingerbread man, accidental magic grants him a soul and a long, perilous journey toward true independence.

King John of Jingalo: The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties
Laurence Housman
A monarch trapped in a web of tradition discovers that his true power lies in the startling, disruptive act of simply telling the truth.

Lady Connie
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A young woman of means arrives in an insular university city, only to find her heart caught between a reckless aristocrat and the vulnerable musician he has cruelly wronged.

Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians
Elias Johnson
An indigenous chief offers a corrective lens on the history and spirit of his people, challenging the prevailing narratives of the nineteenth century by reclaiming the Iroquois and Tuscarora experience from the margins of colonial record.

Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States
Frank Crosby
A chronicle of the sixteenth president’s path through the crucible of the Civil War, told primarily through the official words that defined his administration and preserved a fractured nation.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876
Various
This collection captures the expansive curiosity of 1876, blending the industrial optimism of a world’s fair with the intimate, often turbulent lives of characters caught in the sweep of social and emotional change.

Love Me Little, Love Me Long
Charles Reade
A quiet, character-driven study of courtship, this narrative examines how young women navigate the expectations of older relatives while quietly asserting their own agency in the selection of a partner.

Madame Adam (Juliette Lambert), la grande Française
Winifred Stephens Whale
A woman of relentless intellect and deep-seated patriotism, Juliette Adam serves as the vibrant pulse of a changing France across a century of upheaval. This account charts her evolution from a precocious provincial girl into the formidable editor of La Nouvelle Revue and the influential center of a vital political…

Marching Men
Sherwood Anderson
The rhythm of thousands of feet moving in unison holds a strange, hypnotic power, offering a sense of order to souls exhausted by the chaos of modern industrial life.

Marzio's Crucifix, and Zoroaster
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A volatile Roman artisan descends into the madness of his own jealousies, while in a distant, ancient empire, a philosopher-priest discovers that love and faith are far more fragile than his own rigid intellect.

Medieval English Literature
W. P. (William Paton) Ker
The study of old texts reveals the spirit of past ages, showing that even the most distant medieval authors shared our fundamental human concerns.

Mexico
Susan Hale
This historical survey navigates the complex evolution of Mexican identity, tracing the path from ancient indigenous foundations through the turbulence of the Spanish conquest, colonial rule, and the eventual struggle for modern republican independence.

Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This collection gathers the intimate correspondence and scattered remarks of a musical giant, offering a rare, unmediated window into the daily life, professional struggles, and inner convictions of a man who changed the course of Western art. By stripping away the layers of later myth-making, the text presents a…

My Native Land: The United States: its Wonders, its Beauties, and its People
James Cox
The vast American landscape, from the Atlantic shore to the Pacific coast, unfolds as a mosaic of history, folklore, and frontier struggle in this sweeping, early twentieth-century survey.

My Second Year of the War
Frederick Palmer
A panoramic, firsthand account of the British and French offensives on the Somme, capturing the mechanical fury and human resilience of the Great War’s central struggle.

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
William Wells Brown
A harrowing, firsthand account of the brutal reality of American chattel slavery, this narrative transforms from a story of personal survival into an urgent, lifelong plea for human liberty.

Old Mole: Being the Surprising Adventures in England of Herbert Jocelyn Beenham, M.A., Sometime Sixth-Form Master at Thrigsby Grammar School in the County of Lancaster
Gilbert Cannan
A scholarly schoolmaster abandons his stifling life in a provincial town to chase the unpredictable, messy currents of human passion and artistic discovery.

Pond and Stream
Arthur Ransome
A celebration of the small, hidden lives found in ponds and streams, this guide captures the curiosity of two children learning to observe the natural world.

Robt. Schumann
Thomas Tapper
This brief biography introduces young readers to Robert Schumann, a German composer known for his ability to translate human personality and everyday scenes into evocative piano music.

Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania
Wilhelm Meinhold
The tragedy of a scorned woman who unleashes her fury upon a ducal house, this dark historical narrative explores the thin line between human malice and supernatural terror.

Stories by American Authors, Volume 1
Bayard Taylor
This collection of mid-to-late nineteenth-century short fiction offers a window into an era of American ambition, where the boundaries between professional duty, romantic yearning, and moral compromise were often tested by the sudden arrival of fortune or disaster.

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen
Elizabeth Von Arnim
Walking the perimeter of Rügen is an exercise in freedom for a woman who finds her spirit deified by the rhythms of the road. She seeks the quiet beauty of the Baltic, but finds the human landscape far more complicated than the scenery.

The American Missionary
Various
This collection of reports from 1896 offers a candid, firsthand window into the social and spiritual priorities of the American Missionary Association at the close of the nineteenth century. It serves as a primary historical record of the era’s organized religious outreach.

The Emigrants Of Ahadarra: The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two
William Carleton
A family’s integrity becomes their sole defense against a web of local greed and malicious legal maneuvering in 19th-century Ireland. This narrative of resilience explores the deep human cost of land insecurity.

The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 1: Psalms I.-XXXVIII
Alexander Maclaren
This volume offers a devotional and analytical exploration of the first thirty-eight Psalms, grounding ancient Hebrew poetry in the lived experience of faith and historical struggle. It provides a bridge between scholarly interpretation and the practical needs of the human heart.

The Eyes of the World
Harold Bell Wright
The mountains serve as a sanctuary for the soul, a place where the pretense of high society dissolves under the gaze of the eternal.

The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812: The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17
Ralph Delahaye Paine
This chronicle recounts the maritime struggle and land campaigns of the War of 1812, emphasizing the pivotal role of the American navy in securing national dignity when the army’s early efforts faltered.

The Great God Success: A Novel
David Graham Phillips
The ascent to power is a lonely, hollow climb where the currency is one’s own integrity. This study of a journalist’s compromise asks what remains of a man when he has traded his ideals for influence.

The history of a mouthful of bread
Jean Macé
The human body is an intricate machine, and understanding its function begins with the simplest act of daily life: taking a single bite of bread. This study of physiology reveals the hidden, rhythmic wonders that sustain our existence.

The Invader: A Novel
Margaret L. (Margaret Louisa) Woods
A portrait in an Oxford dining room sets the stage for a haunting psychological dissolution, where a woman’s identity is fractured by an intrusive, competing self. This narrative explores the unsettling nature of a divided mind and the fragility of the human soul.

The Kempton-Wace Letters
Jack London
HOOK Two thinkers trade letters across the Atlantic, dissecting the nature of love and the human condition as one man prepares for a marriage he approaches with scientific detachment.

The Killer
Stewart Edward White
A young man’s casual dare to spend a night at a notorious ranch leads him into a dangerous web of intrigue, hidden agendas, and frontier justice. It is a quiet, observant encounter with the shadows of the Old West.

The Lamp and the Bell: A Drama In Five Acts
Edna St. Vincent Millay
HOOK A queen finds her life irrevocably fractured after a tragic accident, revealing the harrowing distance between a sister’s love and the cold demands of duty.

The last travels of Ida Pfeiffer: inclusive of a visit to Madagascar, with a biographical memoir of the author
Ida Pfeiffer
This account records the final expedition of a determined Victorian explorer, detailing her journey through Europe, the Indian Ocean, and the treacherous, insular political landscape of mid-nineteenth-century Madagascar.

The Life and Love of the Insect
Jean-Henri Fabre
The humblest life beneath our feet reveals a hidden, complex grandeur, provided we have the patience to watch and the wonder to understand.

The Life and Times of Queen Victoria
Robert Wilson
The British Empire finds itself at a pivotal crossroads, navigating the tension between Victorian domestic tradition and the volatile, shifting realities of a rapidly modernizing nineteenth-century world.

The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687)
William Winstanley
A collection of literary lives, this seventeenth-century survey captures the fading voices of England’s poets, preserving their verses and their end-of-life epitaphs against the encroaching silence of history.