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All free summaries — page 457
34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 457 of 711.
The Pharisee and the Publican
John Bunyan
True humility opens a doorway to divine grace, while self-righteous pride locks a soul inside its own delusion.
The Ship of Coral
H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole
A castaway finds a fortune in Spanish gold, only to be drawn into the web of a cunning, heartless captain whose obsession with a sunken wreck leads them toward a devastating volcanic eruption.
The underworld: The story of Robert Sinclair, miner
James C. Welsh
A young Scottish miner fights to lift his community out of brutal poverty and systemic industrial oppression, only to find his dreams of personal love and social justice tested by tragic turns of fate.
The uses of astronomy
Edward Everett
A collection of mid-nineteenth-century speeches and historical records captures a turning point in American science, celebrating how astronomical observation elevates human culture while quietly laying the foundation for modern navigation, commerce, and national expansion.
The Visits of Elizabeth
Elinor Glyn
A high-spirited seventeen-year-old aristocrat writes her invalid mother a stream of letters chronicling her visits across English country houses and high-society France.
The Whelps of the Wolf
George Marsh
The vast, frozen wilderness of the Canadian north tests the bond between a man and his dog. In this story, loyalty and instinct survive even the harshest winters and the deepest human betrayals.
The Woggle-Bug Book
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A towering, educated insect visits the human world and falls hopelessly in love with a bright plaid dress.
The Yellow Knight of Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
A forgotten king is remembered, an earthbound boy breaks the sky, and a knight learns that his grandest quest was already behind him.
Those Other Animals
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
A satirical re-examination of nature flips the human perspective on its head, arguing that humanity's favorite animals are often overrated parasites while its most despised pests are marvels of efficiency, character, and quiet industry.
Tillie, a Mennonite Maid
Helen Reimensnyder Martin
A young Mennonite girl in rural Pennsylvania fights her father's harsh tyranny to pursue an education, a broader world, and the right to her own life.
Tom Tiddler's Ground
Charles Dickens
A summer day spent confronting a self-absorbed hermit exposes the vanity of solitude and the quiet strength of human connection.
Twilight Land
Howard Pyle
A nameless traveler floats past a sunless horizon into the Sign of Mother Goose, where legendary storytellers trade timeless fables over crackling tavern fires.
Wandering Heath
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Ghostly drummers on storm-swept reefs, bumbling local militias, and infants writing cynical diaries all find a home in this whimsical Cornish collection.
War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ
David Low Dodge
The act of war stands in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ, requiring a complete rejection of violence by those who follow the gospel. This rigorous argument demands that the faithful choose between the sword and their Savior.
War—What For?
George R. (George Ross) Kirkpatrick
A searing Socialist polemic addresses the American working class, laying bare how financial elites orchestrate international conflicts while using working-class sons as cheap cannon fodder.
We Three
Gouverneur Morris
An idle man of privilege becomes tangled in a marriage that is already falling apart, only to discover that love without discipline destroys everyone involved.
Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices, and Other Stories
Anthony Trollope
This collection of tales explores the quiet collisions between personal integrity and the shifting economic realities of the nineteenth century. It captures the small, lived consequences of pride, duty, and social expectation with steady, unadorned observation.
Woman Triumphant (La Maja Desnuda)
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
A great artist surrenders his peace to an ideal he can neither paint nor replace.
A Brief History of the United States
John Bach McMaster
Centuries of continental transformation unfold not through high-flown rhetoric, but through the hard mechanics of human movement, legislative compromises, and raw physical labor.
A Man to His Mate
Dunn, J. Allan, (Joseph Allan)
A sightless seaman with a mountain of a body leads a desperate expedition into the Bering Strait to claim a fortune in beach gold, indifferent to mutiny, ice, or foreign gunboats.
A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany-Bay
Watkin Tench
A British marine officer details the 1787 voyage of the First Fleet and the fragile establishment of the first European penal settlement in Australia.
A Select Party
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A wealthy visionary builds a glittering palace out of evening clouds and invites the world's most elusive, legendary, and hypothetical figures to a grand banquet.
A Volunteer with Pike: The True Narrative of One Dr. John Robinson and of His Love for the Fair Señorita Vallois
Robert Ames Bennet
A young American physician treks into uncharted western territory, crosses Spanish borders to claim the woman he loves, and survives wilderness frosts and British sea-scoundrels.
Always a Qurono
Jim Harmon
A rigid, rule-bound captain finds his sanity challenged when he is marooned among alien androids who live their lives according to an even more obsessive, clockwork routine than his own.
An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Volume 2
Alexander Hewatt
A rigorous, mid-eighteenth-century chronicle documents how imperial ambition, local trial, and administrative folly shaped the American South.
Andrew Jackson
William Garrott Brown
A tall, fiery youth from the backwoods slashes his way from border brawls and Indian wars to the highest office in the nation, governing by sheer force of an unyielding personal will.
Anna Christie
Eugene O'Neill
A harsh past collides with an uncertain future when a weary young woman steps into a New York waterfront saloon to find the father she hasn't seen in fifteen years.
Aurora Floyd, Vol. 1: Fifth Edition
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
Secretly wed to a groom in her impetuous youth, a banker's heiress marries for love while her hidden past comes back to haunt her.
Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico
John M. (John Maxwell) Corbett
In the high desert of the San Juan Basin, massive stone complexes stand as silent testaments to centuries of human ingenuity, migration, and sudden, inexplicable abandonment.
Barbarossa, and Other Tales
Paul Heyse
Fate, coincidence, and unyielding human passion collide in these romantic nineteenth-century tales of tragic love, hidden identities, and moral endurance.
Beatrice Leigh at College: A Story for Girls
Julia Augusta Schwartz
Four years of undergraduate life bring high-spirited young women through rowdy pranks, painful misunderstandings, and quiet sacrifices into mature womanhood.
Benjamin Franklin
Paul Elmer More
Practical sense and tireless curiosity drive a printer’s apprentice from the back streets of colonial Boston to the royal courts of Europe, reshaping a rising nation through sheer force of intellect and pragmatic virtue.
Bernard Brooks' Adventures: The Experience of a Plucky Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A spunky, clear-eyed fifteen-year-old takes on the world with wits, courage, and an utter refusal to be bullied by scheming adults.
Bohemian Grammar
Jaroslav Victor Nigrin
A practical, early twentieth-century guide turns the formidable mechanics of Bohemian grammar into an accessible pathway for English speakers learning the language.
Chambers's Elementary Science Readers: Book I
Various
A simple garden stroll expands into a systematic discovery of nature, industry, and the physical materials shaping everyday Victorian life.
Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby, and Silas Gough, Clerk
Walter Savage Landor
Young William Shakespeare faces a trial for deer-stealing before a pompous magistrate, using his quick-witted eloquence to defend his freedom and chart his destiny.
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City: His Progress and Adventures
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
A street urchin in nineteenth-century Edinburgh navigates poverty, abusive adults, and dangerous misadventures while fiercely guarding a crew of vulnerable friends.
Comets and Meteors: Their phenomena in all ages
Daniel Kirkwood
This survey captures a pivotal moment in nineteenth-century science, when astronomers first realized that the fleeting streaks of light in our night sky are the crumbling remnants of wandering comets.
Condensed Novels
Bret Harte
Literary parody becomes a high art when a writer captures not merely the mannerisms of his contemporaries, but the exact points where their craft gives way to absurdity.
Count Hannibal: A Romance of the Court of France
Stanley John Weyman
A young Huguenot woman is forced during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre to marry a ruthless Catholic nobleman to save her lover's life, starting a dangerous journey of survival and unexpected devotion.
Daisy Herself
Will E. (William Ernest) Ingersoll
A spirited prairie girl flees a dull farm for the city, only to discover that navigating urban temptation, strange aristocrats, and her own reckless heart requires more than just stubborn independence.
Danger at the Drawbridge
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
Penny Parker, an audacious teenaged reporter with a knack for trouble, refuses to let a barricaded drawbridge stop her from landing the story of a lifetime.
Deadlock
Dorothy M. (Dorothy Miller) Richardson
A young woman navigates the quiet interior tides of London boarding-house life, finding her sense of self continually reshaped through an intense intellectual partnership.
Disturbing Sun
Robert S. (Robert Shirley) Richardson
A medical doctor and a radio astronomer trace human waves of irrational rage and depression directly to mysterious, invisible emissions from the sun.
Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains
Amy Brooks
A privileged girl’s summer getaway becomes a gentle lesson in kindness when a spoiled companion’s malice, an unexpected inheritance, and small daily courtesies reshape a mountain resort's social world.
Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 1
Eugene Christian
A rational diet built on scientific laws is humanity's primary tool for escaping disease and unlocking maximum physical vigor.
Episodes before thirty
Algernon Blackwood
Driven by an impulse to escape a rigid evangelical upbringing, a young Englishman plunges into a decade of severe poverty, betrayal, and grinding labor across North America.
First in the Field: A Story of New South Wales
George Manville Fenn
In the Australian bush of the early nineteenth century, an exiled English schoolboy and an unfairly condemned convict forge a quiet alliance to protect a frontier farm.