The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 342
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 342 of 714.
Notice of Runic Inscriptions Discovered during Recent Excavations in the Orkneys
James Farrer
Behind the grassy slopes of an ancient Scottish mound, dark stone corridors open into a forgotten chamber carved with the mysterious runes of medieval Norse wanderers.
Odette's Marriage: A Novel, from the French of Albert Delpit, Translated from the "Revue des Deux Mondes," by Emily Prescott
Albert Delpit
A woman marries the son of the artist she secretly loves, bound to a dark romance that inevitably destroys two households.
On the History of Gunter's Scale and the Slide Rule During the Seventeenth Century
Florian Cajori
Long before digital computation, mathematical minds turned logarithmic scales into physical instruments, sparking an intense seventeenth-century debate over who first brought the slide rule into being.
Operation Haystack
Frank Herbert
An undercover operative returned from the edge of death discovers that a five-hundred-year-old galactic conspiracy is run entirely by his own host family—and every politician's wife in the League.
Poemata
John Milton
Before achieving immortality through English blank verse, a young poet tests his wings in Latin, Greek, and Italian, weaving classical myth, personal grief, and quiet ambition into brilliant early verse.
Poems
Iris Tree
Uncertainty and disillusionment echo through the city as a young poet searches for meaning amidst urban decay and wartime grief.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890
Various
A rowdy late-Victorian week comes to life in a flurry of parliamentary feuds, public sneers, dialect verse, and music-hall silliness.
Punctuation: A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically
Frederick W. (Frederick William) Hamilton
A precise, practical manual bridges the gap between mechanical type composition and clear human thought, revealing how a few standard symbols transform raw strings of words into readable prose.
Ramuntcho
Pierre Loti
A shadow of illegitimacy overhangs a young mountain athlete whose ferocious vitality collides with deep-seated village prejudice, illegal cross-border trade, and the solemn, unyielding sanctuary of the convent.
Red Fox: The Story of His Adventurous Career in the Ringwaak Wilds and of His Final Triumph over the Enemies of His Kind
Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
Born with exceptional size, striking beauty, and sharp intelligence, a wild Canadian fox outsmarts hungry predators, cunning human trappers, and relentless hound packs to defend his native ridge.
Rheims and the Battles for its Possession
Pneu Michelin (Firm)
Destruction and survival meet along the Western Front, where a historic city becomes an open-air laboratory of military endurance, architectural tragedy, and sheer human grit.
Rustlers' roost
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A crooked-nosed convict undergoes facial reconstruction after a brutal escape attempt, returning under an assumed identity to protect the woman he loves and untangle a web of frontier corruption.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882
Various
A December 1882 issue of an American weekly period captures late-nineteenth-century industry, natural science, urban planning, and domestic invention in a single, vivid snapshot of human ingenuity.
Spool Knitting
Mary A. McCormack
Simple tools unlock endless creativity when a child learns to turn raw yarn into wearable garments, soft toys, and household goods.
Studies in the Poetry of Italy, Part II. Italian
Oscar Kuhns
A sweeping journey through centuries of verse traces the evolution of Italian poetry, from its medieval origins to its modern rebirth.
The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, with Some Notes on Seals—and Digressions
Edmund Selous
Solitary hours spent on northern cliffs reveal a world where sea-birds court with open maws and seals roll playfully in wild kelp.
The Bittermeads Mystery
E. R. (Ernest Robertson) Punshon
An unsightly drifter forcibly enters an isolated house, concealing his true identity to uncover a dark murder plot.
The Case of the Lamp That Went Out
Auguste Groner
A humble detective investigates the shooting of a middle-class clerk in suburban Vienna, unspooling a web of upper-class jealousy, secret signals, and hidden sacrifice that leads all the way to Venice.
The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494, 3rd Ed
Lodge, Richard, Sir
Two centuries of European turmoil transform medieval feudalism into modern statecraft as kingdoms, popes, and merchant leagues fight for survival.
The Curved Blades
Carolyn Wells
When a wealthy, dictatorial heiress is found poisoned and struck in her locked bedroom, a tangle of bizarre clues leaves the police helpless.
The Day of Sir John Macdonald: A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion
Pope, Joseph, Sir
A nation's foundation rests not just on grand visions, but on the practical compromises of the men who built it. This chronicle traces the rise of a pragmatic statesman who maneuvered a fractured landscape into a unified dominion.
The Disentanglers
Andrew Lang
Two young London gentlemen down on their luck hatch an unconventional business venture: an agency dedicated to discreetly breaking off unsuitable romantic engagements for wealthy clients through carefully staged social counter-attractions.
The Fantasy Fan, December 1933: The Fans' Own Magazine
Various
A rare window into early science fiction fandom captures a vibrant, passionate subculture locked in fierce debates over the boundaries of weird horror and speculative fiction.
The Gallery
Rog Phillips
A young scholar returns to his small hometown to help his aunt, only to discover that every corner of the village is being quietly observed, recorded, and preserved inside animated portraits.
The Genius
Margaret Horton Potter
A boy born to a ruthless spymaster and a suffering mother finds his true home only in the wild, uncontained world of Russian music.
The Ghost: A Modern Fantasy
Arnold Bennett
A young doctor stumbles into the dazzling, treacherous world of grand opera, where a legendary soprano is haunted by an implacable spirit that wrecks trains, sinks ships, and drives her suitors to terrifying demises.
The Gloved Hand
Burton Egbert Stevenson
A dead eccentric, a dark cult, and framed innocence intersect when a lawyer tries to unravel a murder in an secluded mansion.
The Great War Syndicate
Frank R. Stockton
A private business entity takes over a nation's military operations, deploying terrifyingly precise scientific superweapons to enforce a sudden, absolute global peace.
The Hated Son
Honoré de Balzac
A frail, neglected child grows into an ethereal outcast along the stormy Normandy coast, where the weight of a violent father's hatred turns every breath into a quiet act of survival.
The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls
Various
In short, quiet moments, a small act of kindness or a single unthinking word can change the trajectory of a girl's character forever.
The Law and the Word
T. (Thomas) Troward
Mind and matter operate under a single unified system, where directed human thought actively channels universal law to shape everyday physical reality.
The Literary History of the Adelphi and Its Neighbourhood
Austin Brereton
Between the Strand and the River Thames lies a parcel of London ground whose physical architecture mirrors centuries of English artistic, political, and social transformation.
The Lure of the Camera
Charles S. (Charles Sumner) Olcott
A lens turns ordinary travel into a quiet search for the living traces of great writers, landscapes, and history.
The Makers and Teachers of Judaism: From the Fall of Jerusalem to the Death of Herod the Great
Charles Foster Kent
Out of the ash and ruin of fallen Jerusalem, a scattered people turns to the written word, forging the faith, law, and enduring institutions of Judaism across five tumultuous centuries of foreign rule.
The Man of Adamant: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A fanatical hermit retreats into a dark forest cave to escape humanity's sins, only to find his own self-righteous isolation turning his heart to literal stone.
The Prophet Ezekiel: An Analytical Exposition
Arno Clemens Gaebelein
A prophet foretells the utter ruin of an unfaithful nation, only to envision its distant, glorious restoration.
The Siege of Norwich Castle: A story of the last struggle against the Conqueror
M. M. (Matilda Maria) Blake
In the shadow of the Norman Conquest, a newly wedded countess takes up arms to defend her husband’s fortress against the full, ruthless might of King William.
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 4, December, 1834
Various
This nineteenth-century Southern periodical offers a wide-ranging, unvarnished window into the historical, legal, and literary preoccupations of early American intellectual life.
The Story of a Mine
Bret Harte
Greed, legal fraud, and political corruption collide when a accidentally discovered California quicksilver mine becomes the ultimate prize in a high-stakes struggle spanning backwoods wilderness and the scheming halls of Washington.
The Story of the Mind
James Mark Baldwin
A human mind is not a static machine of isolated faculties, but an active, growing organism that shapes and is shaped by its environment, starting from a child's first simple act of imitation.
The Strollers
Frederic Stewart Isham
A theater troupe on the road brings art, ambition, and secret histories into collision across an expanding nineteenth-century America.
The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado
Logan Marshall
A brutal early-spring storm unleashes nationwide devastation, drowning the towns of the Ohio River Valley and leveling Nebraska under a violent tornado.
The Two Supercargoes
William Henry Giles Kingston
Two young clerks leave their Liverpool desks for the African coast, where sea battles, shipwreck, and dense jungles test their resolve to survive and return home.
The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch
R. C. (Rudolf Chambers) Lehmann
Domestic tenderness, quiet nostalgia, and the dark shadow of the First World War meet in this evocative volume of verse.
The war against Germany: Europe and adjacent areas
Kenneth E. Hunter
A massive logistical machine anchors a sweeping visual record of victory, tracing the American military effort across Western Europe from base staging in Britain to total German collapse.
The Woman in the Alcove
Anna Katharine Green
A glittering diamond vanishes amidst a high-society ball, leaving a beautiful woman dead in a secluded nook and her secret admirer framed for her murder.
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 02
John Dryden
A young empire crumbles under foreign conquest while courtiers scheme in shadowed halls and lovers trade vows in secret. Out of Restoration London’s theatrical fire comes a collection where passion, betrayal, and political ambition clash on every page.
The World That Couldn't Be
Clifford D. Simak
A single rogue predator can ruin a alien harvest, but hunting it across an untamed world reveals a secret that upends everything a human planter knows about life.