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All free summaries — page 383
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 383 of 714.
The Invasion of France in 1814
Erckmann-Chatrian
When Napoleon's empire crumbles, the mountain hamlets of the Vosges learn that war is no longer something French soldiers wage on foreign soil.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, October, 1864
Unknown
Bound to the Roman see by ancient tradition yet isolated by modern media, Ireland's Catholic clergy turn inward to record their history, clarify their canon law, and defend their heritage.
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 04: Caligula
Suetonius
A terrifying descent from beloved prince to erratic tyrant, Suetonius’s profile reveals how absolute power corrodes the human soul.
The Oxford Circus: A Novel of Oxford and Youth
Hamish Miles
An opulent youth swaggers through Oxford and London on a wave of self-regard, unbothered by reality until life demands a final reckoning.
The Princess Sophia
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A spirited Balkan sovereign chooses the thrill of the gaming table over the burdens of statecraft, setting off a battle of wits that stretches across generations.
The Radio Amateur's Hand Book: A Complete, Authentic and Informative Work on Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony
A. Frederick (Archie Frederick) Collins
A comprehensive guide to early twentieth-century radio technology transforms complex electrical physics into accessible instructions for building, tuning, and operating home wireless stations.
The raid of the guerilla, and other stories
Charles Egbert Craddock
A harsh mountain war, an accidental infant in the mail, a fugitive haunted by dog tracks, and a girl who steps into a cage with a muzzled lion—all belong to the rugged, isolated world of Charles Egbert Craddock’s late short stories.
The Return of Peter Grimm: Novelised From the Play
David Belasco
A dead nurseryman returns as a ghost to mend the lives he inadvertently ruined by forcing his earthly will upon those he loved.
The Romance of the Woods
Frederick Whishaw
The northern wilderness is a place of infinite quiet, where a hunter may lie waiting through the dusk while ancient stories stir the pine-scented air.
The Shadow of Ashlydyat
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
A quiet provincial bank crumbles under the reckless hand of a charming partner, leaving an ancient family ruined, a sweet young wife broken-hearted, and an entire English town reckoning with the gap between social appearance and moral truth.
The Third Volume
Fergus Hume
Unresolved bloodstains and missing identities collide when an old tragedy resurfaces to unravel a Victorian family's carefully constructed illusions.
The Way of the Strong
Ridgwell Cullum
Driven by ambition, greed, and a long-buried secret, a northern wilderness outlaw rebuilds himself into a western wheat king, only to face his past when labor strikes and family ties converge.
The Wreck of the Golden Mary
Charles Dickens
A dark, blinding fog hides an iceberg from a dedicated crew carrying forty-four passengers and a fortune in gold toward the promise of California.
The Yellow Poppy
D. K. (Dorothy Kathleen) Broster
Courage, sacrifice, and the quiet persistence of devotion illuminate D. K. Broster’s gripping tale of war, hidden treasure, and rekindled love set against the twilight of the French Revolution.
The Young Emigrants
Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
Bound by a common destination, a small band of hopeful travellers turns away from the familiar shores of home to build a new existence in the wild, open spaces of the American continent.
Three Hats: A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts
Arthur Shirley
A case of mistaken identities, lost hats, and romantic entanglements leads to a farcical comedy of errors.
Three Thousand Dollars
Anna Katharine Green
A criminal plot, a secret mechanism, and a brave stenographer intersect in a high-stakes New York office drama.
Tom Slade
Percy Keese Fitzhugh
The story of a young delinquent’s transformation proves that a boy’s roughest edges can be reshaped when given purpose, trust, and real responsibility.
Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat
Victor Appleton
A brilliant young inventor down to his last options takes a sub-sea gamble for three hundred thousand dollars in gold.
Universal Brotherhood, Volume XIII, No. 10, January 1899: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, the Theosophical Movement, Philosophy, Science and Art
Various
A turn-of-the-century collection of essays and stories maps the human spirit through the combined lenses of Theosophical doctrine, political biography, and practical ethics.
Valerie
Frederick Marryat
A young Frenchwoman endures domestic cruelty, flees into the world under a false name, and quietly carves out a respectable life through grit and musical talent.
Velazquez
S. L. (Samuel Levy) Bensusan
An artist of quiet perfection navigates the rigid ceremonial of an empire in decline, transforming court constraint into silver-toned masterpieces that outshine the fame of kings.
Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of 2500 Miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, During the Years 1874-5
Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes) Bishop
A sole traveler glides through the inland waterways of a changing continent, navigating treacherous bays, quiet canals, and murky cypress swamps in a fragile craft made of paper.
Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde": An Essay on the Wagnerian Drama
George Ainslie Hight
The mind must entirely change its attitude when encountering Richard Wagner’s art, shifting away from superficial operatic spectacles toward a deep, organic unity of drama and music.
Wang the Ninth: The Story of a Chinese Boy
B. L. (Bertram Lenox) Putnam Weale
A street-wise boy navigates the brutal collapse of nineteenth-century China, surviving famine, wall-climbing smugglers, and siege warfare with unyielding grit.
Years of My Youth
William Dean Howells
Setting ink into type at the printer's bench before sunrise, a young boy learns that words carry the power to shape both a quiet home and a rising nation.
A Catalogue of Books Published by Methuen and Co., October 1909
Methuen & Co.
An exhaustive trade publication captures the immense range of Edwardian print culture, preserving a precise inventory of active titles, subject series, price points, and author rosters at the end of the decade.
A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee": From the Diary of Number Five of the After Port Gun (Russell Doubleday): The Yarn of the Cruise and Fights of the Naval Reserves in the Spanish-American War
Russell Doubleday
A group of green New York college boys and clerks step onto a converted auxiliary cruiser and transform into the battle-tested naval gunners of the Spanish-American War.
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia: With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country
Samuel Brunt
A stranded English sailor discovers an empire of giant, speaking poultry, rising through its corrupt political ranks only to embark on a desperate spaceflight to the moon.
Abraham Lincoln and the Union: A Chronicle of the Embattled North
Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright) Stephenson
Northern political maneuvering and administrative endurance, rather than battlefield tactics, dictate the survival of the American Republic through its greatest trial.
An Apache Princess: A Tale of the Indian Frontier
Charles King
A sun-bleached Arizona outpost erupts into suspicion, betrayal, and violence when an officer's mysterious assault collides with a deadly Apache uprising.
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
Henry Fielding
A sharp, mercenary servant girl leverages her calculated modesty to trap a foolish young squire into marriage, exposing the hypocrisies of virtuous posturing.
An ethical problem
Albert Leffingwell
Behind closed laboratory doors, a profound moral compromise takes root when scientific ambition discards empathy. This urgent inquiry exposes the hidden cruelties of unrestrained research, arguing that human progress loses its moral authority when achieved through unmonitored pain.
Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce
Bernard Shaw
A pomposity-blinded aristocrat running a rural recruiting office attempts to demonstrate superior wartime vigilance, only to be effortlessly bamboozled by a cleverly disguised visitor.
Aylwin
Theodore Watts-Dunton
The sea erodes a eastern English cliff, dragging ancestral tombs into the deep, while a dead father’s curse follows two lovers across the Welsh mountains and into the bohemian attics of Victorian London.
Bayard: the Good Knight Without Fear and Without Reproach
Christopher Hare
Bound by honor in an age of shifting alliances, a noble knight traverses the battlefields of Renaissance Europe, proving that unwavering loyalty and quiet integrity endure longer than the conquests of kings.
Beside Still Waters
Robert Sheckley
An aging prospector seeks ultimate solitude on a half-mile slab of rock floating in space, taking along only an adaptable, standard-issue robot for company.
Betrothed for a day
Laura Jean Libbey
A high-society betrayal and an unexpected southern inheritance force a penniless hero and an unpolished heiress into a sudden marriage, testing whether love can survive deceit, mistaken identities, and financial ruin.
Bolax, Imp or Angel—Which?
Josephine Culpeper
A high-spirited young boy navigates the scrapes and temptations of childhood while growing into a compassionate, faithful young man.
By-Ways of War: The Story of the Filibusters
James Jeffrey Roche
Desperate men across the nineteenth century sought wealth and empire by private force, invading foreign nations to carve out personal realms before their lawless crusades collapsed in tragedy and blood.
Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge
Unknown
A painstaking survey of rare early English printing lays open the raw textual foundations of Elizabethan drama and Renaissance literature.
Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century
Unknown
A monarch with oversized doublets who relies on his favorites; a king who faces execution; a general who marches under a cloud of conflicting allegiances. In this anthology, seventeenth-century England comes alive through the eyes of those who watched its tragic history unfold.
Cloud Studies
Arthur William Clayden
This elegant guide elevates the sky from a mere backdrop to a vast, observable laboratory, inviting readers to look upward with the precision of a scientist and the soul of an artist. It bridges the gap between casual observation and rigorous meteorological study, offering a detailed taxonomy of clouds that…
Danes, Saxons and Normans
John G. (John George) Edgar
Long before the Norman fleet anchors off Hastings, centuries of blood, ambition, and shifting crowns shape the British Isles. Violent dynastic rivalries, broken oaths, and bold conquests forge a single nation from hostile, warring races.
David Poindexter's Disappearance, and Other Tales
Julian Hawthorne
A clergyman unmoors his soul for a sudden fortune, while phantom lovers and secret passages entangle ordinary lives in uncanny webwork.
Dawson Black: Retail Merchant
Harold Whitehead
A young, impetuous storekeeper learns that managing a small-town hardware business takes far more than raw ambition, discovering that true commercial success depends on mastering numbers, controlling impulse, and listening to wise advice.
Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There
Emanuel Swedenborg
An extraordinary visionary account maps out the spiritual geography of the cosmos, insisting that human life is not confined to a single world.
Frederick Warne & Co.'s list of juvenile literature, prize books, and gift books for young people
Frederick Warne and Co.
This Victorian publisher’s catalogue presents an expansive, highly structured vision of moral, adventurous, and educational reading designed to mold young minds across the British Empire.