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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 391 of 714.

The Emigrant Trail
Geraldine Bonner
A journey across early America strips away the delicate fictions of civilized life, demanding that every traveler decide what kind of human being they intend to be when the safety of home vanishes.

The eternal savage
Edgar Rice Burroughs
An ancient earthquake shakes a caveman forward into the modern African wilderness, while a recurring dream draws a young American woman back to the dawn of time to find her lost hunter.

The Gate of the Giant Scissors
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A lonely young girl in turn-of-the-century Touraine unlocks the hearts of her dour neighbors and brings warmth to an estranged family through small acts of courage.

The Giraffe Hunters
Mayne Reid
A relentless pursuit across the nineteenth-century African interior tests four young colonial hunters as they face dangerous game, hostile forces, and the daunting task of capturing live wild giraffes.

The Great Court Scandal
William Le Queux
Trapped in a web of malicious court rumors, a exiled royal finds herself fleeing for her freedom alongside a charismatic thief.

The Green Mirror: A Quiet Story
Hugh Walpole
A young man enters an ancient, stifling English family, igniting a war of possession that forces a devoted daughter to choose between her inheritance and her freedom.

The Hand-Made Gentleman: A Tale of the Battles of Peace
Irving Bacheller
An ambitious youth navigates the boom of industrial America, discovering that true nobility is crafted through quiet integrity rather than corporate conquest.

The Haunting of Low Fennel
Sax Rohmer
A secluded English cottage harbors a sinister force, while half a world away, an ancient curse turns a desert expedition into a deadly nightmare.

The Heart of Cherry McBain: A Novel
Douglas Durkin
Amid the rugged, unforgiving wilderness of early Canada, a woman of indomitable will and a quiet, steadfast laborer find their fates entangled with a violent, ambitious foreman.

The history of the harlequinade, volume 2 (of 2)
Maurice Sand
Ancestral comic types pass down their masks, tricks, and physical absurdities across centuries of theatrical history.

The Hundred, and Other Stories
Gertrude Hall Brownell
A child’s wild holiday evening in a brownstone, a student’s clumsy heartbreak in the spring, a fading girl watching Florence from a balcony, a young prodigal with a violin, and a quiet woman untangling a small-town love triangle—these stories map the sweet, stubborn longings of ordinary lives.

The Isle of Unrest
Henry Seton Merriman
High on the wind-swept cliffs of Corsica, an ancient blood feud reignites just as France slides headlong into disaster on the battlefields of 1870.

The Lookout Man
B. M. Bower
Fleeing a hit-and-run charge in Los Angeles, a spoiled young man hides out as a Sierra forest lookout, finding redemption and unexpected love in the high country.

The Machine
Upton Sinclair
A corrupt political boss, a ruthless transit tycoon, and an idealist caught in their net clash over a stolen city franchise and the human cost of unbridled greed.

The Man in the Twilight
Ridgwell Cullum
A visionary scheme to build the world's largest pulp mill in the wilderness of Labrador founders on a secret flaw of character, leaving its grand legacy to an unsuspecting successor and an estranged daughter.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 10: under the Leads
Giacomo Casanova
In a damp, lead-roofed cell overlooking Venice, a man sits listening to the chimes of St. Mark’s and calculating the precise thickness of his floorboards.

The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley
James Otis
A handful of boys in the Mohawk Valley take up arms to defend their homes, only to find themselves thrust into the brutal center of the American Revolution.

The Onslaught from Rigel
Fletcher Pratt
An alien invasion alters human biology, forcing transformed survivors into a desperate campaign of high-tech guerilla warfare.

The Risk Profession
Donald E. Westlake
A space-age insurance investigator heads into the Asteroid Belt to verify a suspicious claim, only to unearth a cold-blooded murder hidden inside a sealed pressure suit.

The Socialist
Guy Thorne
A young duke abandons his inherited fortune and aristocratic privilege to champion the Socialist movement alongside a talented, resolute actress.

The Spell of Egypt
Robert Hichens
To step into Egypt is to yield to a world bathed in dawning gold, where ancient stone still breathes out the eternal light and shadows of human ambition.

The story of paper-making
Frank Osgood Butler
Humanity’s quest for a lasting record began with stone tablets and animal skins, but it found its true vessel in the humble, transformative power of paper. This account traces that journey from ancient scrap to the industrial marvels of the turn of the twentieth century.

The Story of the Other Wise Man
Henry Van Dyke
A Median priest spends thirty-three years following a miraculous star, missing every meeting with the Messiah because he cannot ignore the suffering people directly in his path.

The Untamed
Max Brand
A phantom-like nomad with an animal's senses fights to protect his wild nature when a brutal outlaw circle and the woman he loves both try to pull him into civilization.

The Wicker Work Woman: A Chronicle of Our Own Times
Anatole France
A betrayed academic uses stubborn silence and cold logic to quietly evict his unfaithful wife from their dismal home.

The Young Housekeeper's Friend: Revised and Enlarged
Mrs. (Mary Hooker) Cornelius
A practical guide to nineteenth-century domestic management, offering economical recipes, household cleaning strategies, and sensible schedule management for young American homemakers navigating the demands of early married life.

Tommy Atkins at War: As Told in His Own Letters
James Alexander Kilpatrick
Ordinary men thrust into extraordinary violence preserve their sanity through humor, intense loyalty to their comrades, and an unshakable commitment to everyday routines.

Two Little Women
Carolyn Wells
Bound by an easy fence-less lawn, two adjacent houses hold two very different girls. When energetic Dotty Rose moves in next to calm Dolly Fayre, a quiet suburban street turns into the stage for an immediate, lifelong friendship.

Valley of Dreams
Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) Weinbaum
Beneath Mars’s thin skies, ancient ruins yield quiet secrets, but the red sand hides a trap built entirely of human desire.

William Tell Told Again
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
In a legendary Switzerland of overbearing tyrants and absurd taxes, a quiet archer finds his cross-bow-shooting routine interrupted by the ridiculous demands of an empire.

A Handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri and the Neighbourhood
E. B. (Ernest Binfield) Havell
This guide serves as a companion for the traveler and the student alike, offering an intimate look at the architectural majesty of the Great Mogul empire through its enduring monuments. It bridges the gap between historical narrative and aesthetic appreciation, transforming cold stone and mortar into a vivid,…

A lady's captivity among Chinese pirates in the Chinese seas
Fanny Loviot
Swept away by a sudden typhoon off the Chinese coast, a young Frenchwoman finds her merchant ship boarded, plundered, and held captive by ruthless pirates.

A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up
Thomas Paine
Mistakes in a foreign historian's account of the American Revolution prompt a clear-eyed defense of the uprising's true origin, military reality, and global impact.

A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath and the Commandments of God: With a Further History of God's Peculiar People from 1847-1848
Joseph Bates
A radical sea captain turned preacher defends his fragile flock, insisting that the true Sabbath rests on Saturday and that the end of all things is at hand.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 16 to 20
Mark Twain
A boy floating down the Mississippi on a raft must navigate the line between society’s cruel laws and his own growing conscience while protecting a fleeing friend.

Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, September 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899
Various
The progress of human knowledge is a restless, shifting enterprise, captured here at the precise moment when the nineteenth century turned its gaze toward the complexities of the twentieth.

Arbuthnotiana: The Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost (1712) A Catalogue of Dr. Arbuthnot's Library (1779)
Unknown
This collection pairs a sharp, bite-sized political lampoon from the era of Queen Anne with a sober, granular accounting of an intellectual’s private life. It offers a rare glimpse into both the public vitriol and the private study of the eighteenth century.

Ars Recte Vivendi
George William Curtis
The art of living well is less a matter of rigid rules than of cultivating a spirit of thoughtful consideration for others. This collection of essays serves as a timeless primer on character, courtesy, and the quiet weight of personal responsibility.

Berenice
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A high-minded London scholar falls under the spell of a captivating actress, only to find their mutual passion tested by rigid morality, public scandal, and a devastating secret from her past.

Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight: The Expeditious Traveller's Index to Its Prominent Beauties & Objects of Interest. Compiled Especially with Reference to Those Numerous Visitors Who Can Spare but Two or Three Days to Make the Tour of the Island
George Brannon
A practical, century-old companion for the hurried sightseer, this guide captures the essence of the Isle of Wight’s dramatic cliffs, quiet villages, and royal retreats in a single, efficient itinerary.

Browning and His Century
Helen A. (Helen Archibald) Clarke
Robert Browning’s poetry serves as a sprawling, intricate map of the nineteenth century’s deepest spiritual and intellectual upheavals. By examining his work through the lens of history, this study reveals a mind that intuitively grasped the era’s most profound shifts before they were fully articulated by science…

Buddhism and Buddhists in China
Lewis Hodous
Faith in China is a tapestry woven from multiple threads, where Buddhist spirituality, Confucian ethics, and Taoist folklore converge to define the daily existence of the common person. This study explores how these ancient traditions harmonize to shape the Chinese heart.

Chin-Chin
Ki-tong Tcheng
A gentle, observant invitation into the everyday rhythms of Chinese life, this work offers a window into a culture’s private pastimes, celebrations, and philosophical outlook.

Cruise of the "Alert"
R. W. (Richard William) Coppinger
A naval surgeon records the natural wonders and rugged terrains encountered during a four-year global surveying mission. This detailed log captures the intersection of Victorian scientific inquiry and the shifting landscapes of the nineteenth-century world.

Cruisings in the Cascades: A Narrative of Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography
G. O. (George O.) Shields
This account of nineteenth-century western exploration captures a vanishing frontier through the eyes of an avid sportsman, photographer, and chronicler of the rugged wilderness. It serves as both a travelogue and a historical record of a rapidly changing American landscape.

Daniel Defoe
William Minto
This portrait of a restless, endlessly inventive mind examines the turbulent life of the man who mastered the art of the pamphlet and the modern novel.

Deborah: A tale of the times of Judas Maccabaeus
James M. (James Meeker) Ludlow
Set against the backdrop of the Maccabean Revolt, this historical novel follows a spirited Jewish woman and a conflicted Greek soldier whose lives collide during the struggle to save Jerusalem. It serves as a vivid dramatization of a pivotal moment in ancient history, balancing political intrigue with personal…

Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
John Ruskin
The life of a nation is written in its smallest acts, and the decay of an empire begins in the moral indifference of its children. This work serves as an urgent, eccentric, and deeply personal call for a return to craftsmanship, sincerity, and the stewardship of the common good.