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1,770 public-domain books, summarised. Page 37 of 37.
Messengers of Evil: Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantômas
Pierre Souvestre
A mysterious arch-villain terrorizes Paris, leaving a trail of bodies, forged notes, and ruined lives that outsmart the city's best detectives.
The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters
Edward Sylvester Ellis
Along the foggy waterways of coastal Maine, three young friends and a clever detective pursue a gang of dangerous boat-borne burglars across calm inlets and hidden island hideouts.
In The Boyhood of Lincoln: A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk
Hezekiah Butterworth
Set across the rugged frontier of early nineteenth-century Indiana and Illinois, this historical romance traces how the compassionate principles of a wandering schoolmaster and the quiet integrity of a young, unpolished Abraham Lincoln shape a frontier community.
Laboulaye's Fairy Book
Édouard Laboulaye
This lively nineteenth-century collection uses playful satire, colorful enchantments, and sharp humor to rewrite traditional fairy tales for readers who love clever heroines and ridiculous kings.
The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics: A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student
Franklin Beech
Transforming raw plant fiber into vibrant, colorfast textiles requires mastering a precise dance of organic chemistry, mechanical agitation, and thermal control. Behind every rich shade lies an intricate science of preparation, immersion, and fixation.
The Beloved Woman
Kathleen Thompson Norris
A spirited young woman, lifted from working-class obscurity into New York’s elite society, must choose between an alluring married lover and the quiet integrity of her true home.
The Dude Wrangler
Caroline Lockhart
A soft-spoken Eastern gentleman trading velvet rugs for Wyoming dirt finds that overcoming the West—and his own meek reputation—takes far more grit than he ever bargained for.
The Flaw in the Sapphire
Charles M. Snyder
A eccentric young man who buys sold-clothes finds serialized pages of a oriental mystery on discarded shirt collars, setting off a dual story that moves between a Philadelphia boarding house and an Indian palace.
Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume II
Thomson, A. T., Mrs.
Divided by political ambition, clan ties, and shifting dynastic loyalties, a generation of Scottish noblemen risks fortunes, titles, and lives for the restoration of the exiled House of Stuart.
Prudy Keeping House
Sophie May
A group of children left to play at house-keeping in a grand New York home quickly find their grand game tested by ruined dinners, misplaced jewels, and sudden temper.
The Sign of the Spider
Bertram Mitford
Desperate for money and suffocated by a souring marriage, an English trader abandons respectable poverty for South Africa, only to discover that the fastest way out of financial ruin is a ruthless march into the uncharted interior.
Aesop, in Rhyme: Old Friends in a New Dress
Aesop
Animal encounters and sharp human miscalculations unfold through rhyming verse, turning classic lessons on pride, greed, and survival into lively, memorable vignettes.
The American Empire
Scott Nearing
A young republic's egalitarian ideals yield to the relentless economic momentum of territorial expansion, industrial concentration, and global empire.
The Escape of Mr. Trimm: His Plight and other Plights
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
An unpunished crime, a desperate flight, and an inescapable set of steel shackles test the absolute limits of human endurance.
Timaeus
Plato
Long before modern physics, an ancient thinker envisioned the cosmos as a single, living creature forged from harmony, geometry, and a divine architect's desire to bring order out of disorder.
The Key to Theosophy: Being a Clear Exposition, in the Form of Question and Answer, of the Ethics, Science and Philosophy for the Study of Which the Theosophical Society Has Been Founded
H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky
Constructed as a series of sharp, analytical dialogues, this treatise outlines a universal spiritual philosophy that seeks to reconcile ancient wisdom with modern reason, proposing that human destiny is governed by self-reliance, moral law, and endless evolution.
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 1 (of 2)
Unknown
A dramatic march through English courtrooms exposes how law, power, and political survival clashed across a turbulent century, revealing the human cost of high treason.
Diderot and the Encyclopædists (Vol. 2 of 2)
John Morley
A sweeping intellectual journey through the sunset of the French Enlightenment, where brilliant radical thinkers risk total social ruin to rewrite the moral, artistic, and political foundations of the modern Western world.
Frank Merriwell's Son
Burt L. Standish
A father’s legacy casts a long shadow over a bustling New England estate, where old college bonds, sports field rivalries, and sudden domestic perils test a legendary hero's inner circle.
Free Air
Sinclair Lewis
A young Brooklyn woman flees eastern conventions behind the wheel of a sixty-horsepower roadster, discovering that the muddy trails of the American West demand far more grit than her polite upbringing ever prepared her to give.
Peak and Prairie: From a Colorado Sketch-book
Anna Fuller
Against the dramatic backdrop of Pikes Peak, Eastern health-seekers and local pioneers cross paths in a frontier town where high mountain air reshapes ambitions, romances, and moral resolve.
The Last Woman
Ross Beeckman
A high-stakes financial bargain entangles a proud New York heiress, her wealthy fiancé, and a reckless Western rancher in a web of injured pride, false rumors, and dangerous devotions.
Adventures in Many Lands
Various
A frost-bitten trek through a dark canyon, a sudden spring from a wounded predator, and a desperate pursuit across a moonlit cornfield set the tone for this thrilling collection of global escapades.
Choice Cookery
Catherine Owen
A rigorous manual for ambitious home cooks, Catherine Owen’s 1889 volume demystifies high-end French and English culinary techniques to make sophisticated entertaining accessible without hiring expensive professional caterers.
Pushing to the Front
Orison Swett Marden
Courage and unyielding resolve transform ordinary people into giants of achievement.
Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit: A Guide for Those Who Wish to Prepare and Mount Animals, Birds, Fish, Reptiles, etc., for Home, Den, or Office Decoration
Albert Burton Farnham
A meticulous, hands-on instructional manual, Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit turns the field dressing and preservation of wild specimens into a disciplined, accessible craft for early twentieth-century outdoorsmen.
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius
Niccolò Machiavelli
A republic survives not by avoiding internal friction, but by channeling the competing ambitions of its citizens into enduring public laws.
A Manual of the Malay language: With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay
Maxwell, William Edward, Sir
To master a spoken language, one must look beyond its daily vocabulary to the deep linguistic currents—Sanskrit roots, regional idioms, and structural simplicity—that give the tongue its unique historical pulse and practical rhythm.
The Boy Crusaders: A Story of the Days of Louis IX
John G. (John George) Edgar
Bound by a boyhood oath, two English squires follow a saintly French king into the Egyptian desert, where high medieval chivalry dissolves in the blood, sand, and captivity of a doomed Crusade.
The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
An unyielding expose of mob violence in post-Reconstruction America, this text meticulously dismantles the political myths used to justify murder and demands international accountability through verified historical data.
The Story of Beowulf, Translated from Anglo-Saxon into Modern English Prose
Ernest J. B. (Ernest John Brigham) Kirtlan
An ancient king is sent out to sea in a ship heavy with treasure, leaving a world of hall-feasts, monster-haunted fens, and doom-eager men to face their fates.
Indian Conjuring
L. H. (Lionel Hugh) Branson
Beneath the mystique of street magic lies a practical craft governed by physics, hidden pockets, and clever misdirection. Demystifying these traditional sleights reveals the simple mechanisms behind legendary wonders.
The Sleeping Beauty
C. S. (Charles Seddon) Evans
When a kingdom tries to outsmart a bitter fairy's curse, it only manages to pause time itself until true courage arrives.
The Fire People
Ray Cummings
An invading force arrives in silver vessels, wielding a light that burns whole towns to ash and forcing humanity to fight for its very home.
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Unknown
A sweeping, multi-authored mosaic of world history details how visionary leaders, spiritual reformers, and cunning monarchs forged nations and transformed human thought through sheer force of will.
Heroes and Hunters of the West: Comprising Sketches and Adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Logan, Whetzel, Fleehart, Hughes, Johnson, &c
John Frost
A hunter crouches in the wet cane, waiting for the smoke of a campfire to betray his target. Across the Ohio River Valley, survival is an exercise in extreme vigilance, sudden violence, and raw physical endurance.
The Theory of the Leisure Class
Thorstein Veblen
An uncompromising analysis of modern consumer culture reveals how human beings transform ordinary possessions and daily habits into elaborate visual proof of social status.
In and Around Berlin
Minerva Brace Norton
An observant American traveler explores late nineteenth-century Berlin, capturing the quiet rhythms of its homes, the grandeur of its imperial courts, and the bustling life of its historic streets.
Milton
Raleigh, Walter Alexander, Sir
Understanding a supreme, unyielding poet demands a critic of equal independence, one who traces how personal conviction turns into monumental, classic verse.
Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life. Volume 1
Samuel Lover
A blunder in an Irish village rarely stays a quiet affair, especially when the servant responsible possesses an almost supernatural talent for turning simple instructions into grand catastrophe.
Essentials of Diseases of the Skin: Including the Syphilodermata Arranged in the Form of Questions and Answers Prepared Especially for Students of Medicine
Henry Weightman Stelwagon
A catechism of clinical observation, this turn-of-the-century manual reduces human skin and its myriad afflictions into a rigorous sequence of questions, definitions, diagnostic boundaries, and medicinal recipes.
To Mars via the Moon: An Astronomical Story
Mark Wicks
An English gentleman and his inventive protege embark on a daring voyage through space, discovering that the mysteries of the cosmos carry profound lessons for human society.