The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 462
32,123 public-domain books, summarised. Page 462 of 670.
The Bandbox
Louis Joseph Vance
Mistaken identities and a high-society jewel heist spark a breathless chase across the Atlantic and through the shadows of Manhattan.
The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort
Albert N. (Albert Nathaniel) Williams
A jagged dome of ancient granite rises above the South Dakota plains, holding centuries of native reverence, frantic gold rushes, and carefully built modern resorts within its shadow.
The Bondwoman
Marah Ellis Ryan
A hidden heritage, a secret espionage mission, and a web of aristocratic deceit collide across European salons and plantation parlors as the American Civil War fractures the nation.
The Broken Sword
D. Worthington
A Southern plantation family struggles to maintain its ancestral home amid the systemic chaos and social upheaval of post-Civil War Reconstruction.
The Camerons of Highboro
Beth Bradford Gilchrist
When her father leaves for wartime duty in France, a self-absorbed city teenager expects to coast through a luxurious year with friends. Instead, she finds herself stranded on a remote Vermont farm, forced to trade her silk gowns for farm chores and learn what real courage looks like.
The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow
Auguste Groner
A trail of blood and broken glass in the snow leads an unassuming Austrian detective to a desperate message from a trapped heiress.
The Centralia Conspiracy
Ralph Chaplin
Industrial loggers in the Pacific Northwest fight back when an armed mob attempts to destroy their union hall, triggering a deadly town raid and a brutal campaign of vigilante retaliation.
The Crucial Moment: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
A sudden argument over a flawed levee survey explodes into a fatal gunshot, launching a desperate fugitive across a flooded delta landscape.
The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck: A Scandal of the XVIIth Century
Thomas Longueville
Forced as a young girl into a loveless match by political ambition, an English noblewoman spends decades evading royal decrees, imprisonment, and accusations of sorcery to claim her own life.
The Dove in the Eagle's Nest
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A gentle burgher girl enters a ruthless robber-baron’s fortress, bearing quiet grace into a world ruled by blood, greed, and the law of the fist.
The Fortunes of Oliver Horn
Francis Hopkinson Smith
Youthful ambition, artistic passion, and regional pride collision with old-world traditions as a young Southerner ventures North to pursue his dreams.
The Gray Goose's Story
Amy Prentice
A barnyard goose recounts the gossip, rivalries, and cautionary tales of the farm to a patient human listener.
The Heads of Apex
George Henry Weiss
Desperate down-and-out veterans in Depression-era New York accept a shadowy job offer that plunges them far beneath the ocean floor into a hidden world of ancient tech and immortal horrors.
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Vol. 7: Quebec, Hurons, Cape Breton, 1634-1635
Unknown
A Jesuit missionary endures freeze, smoke, and hostility while wandering the Canadian winter wilderness with an Indigenous band, fighting for survival and souls in an unyielding landscape.
The Jews among the Greeks and Romans
Max Radin
When the ancient Mediterranean world collided with Jewish monotheism, the resulting encounter shaped the course of Western civilization through centuries of fascination, friction, and intellectual exchange.
The lives of celebrated travellers, Vol. 1. (of 3)
James Augustus St. John
A panoramic, clear-eyed journey across medieval and early modern travel writing, this anthology captures the raw edge of global exploration before the modern era.
The Luck of the Dudley Grahams: As Related in Extracts from Elizabeth Graham's Diary
Alice Calhoun Haines
A fatherless family in turn-of-the-century New York tries to keep their household afloat through a series of chaotic misadventures and unexpected windfalls.
The memoirs of Philip de Commines, Lord of Argenton, Volume 1 (of 2)
Philippe de Commynes
A statesman steps away from the gaming table of European politics to explain how kings really govern, blundering through pride, buying off rivals, and mistaking their own appetites for the will of God.
The Metaphysic of Christianity and Buddhism: A Symphony
D. M. (Dawsonne Melanchthon) Strong
A shared thread of mystical insight binds the founders of Christianity and Buddhism together. Stripping away centuries of rigid dogma reveals an underlying harmony between their core teachings on selfhood, suffering, and the divine.
The Mystery of The Barranca
Herman Whitaker
Two young American engineers battle rugged terrain, native hostility, and deadly floods in turn-of-the-century Mexico, only to find their greatest trial is a dangerous romance across a deep cultural divide.
The Natural History of Chocolate: Being a Distinct and Particular Account of the Cocoa-Tree, its Growth and Culture, and the Preparation, Excellent Properties, and Medicinal Vertues of its Fruit
D. Quélus
An eye-witness account written after fifteen years in the Caribbean dismantles colonial myths to map the true biology, cultivation, and medicinal uses of cacao.
The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
Charles Dickens
A private marine recalls a tropical island, a treacherous betrayal, and the desperate defense that bound a group of English castaways together forever.
The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 4 (of 5): Poems of mystery and of myth and romance
Madison Julius Cawein
An ancient ruby pulses like a beating heart upon a lover’s hand, drawing its life from mortal blood before dissolving into mist. Across haunted forests and forgotten ruins, spectral figures and ancient gods whisper the secrets of love, decay, and longing.
The postal power of Congress: A study in constitutional expansion
Lindsay Rogers
The constitutional grant empowering Congress to establish post offices and post roads has quietly grown into a vast mechanism of federal power.
The Princess Pocahontas
Virginia Watson
Before history smoothed her life into a single dramatic moment, Pocahontas was a vibrant, restless girl navigating the dense forests and political fault lines of the Powhatan confederacy.
The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
On the moonlit steps of a Salem municipal building at midnight, two personified sisters exchange final thoughts on the human condition before one vanishes forever into history and the other steps into the mortal world.
The Story of Sitka: The Historic Outpost of the Northwest Coast
Clarence Leroy Andrews
An isolated timber outpost on the North Pacific rim becomes the tense crossroads where imperial Russia, indigenous Thlingit clans, and early American enterprise collide.
The Swan and Her Crew: or The Adventures of Three Young Naturalists and Sportsmen on the Broads and Rivers of Norfolk
G. Christopher (George Christopher) Davies
Three English schoolboys design and construct a double-hulled wooden craft to explore the interconnected waterways of Norfolk, transforming a summer of outdoor adventure into a lifelong education in natural history.
The Tree of Life
C. L. (Catherine Lucile) Moore
A rogue steps into an ancient Martian shadow and slips into a twilit realm where a beautiful siren serves a unthinkable predator.
The Trial
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A young man stands trial for an uncle’s murder he did not commit, forcing two interconnected families to confront their pride, examine their faith, and rebuild their shattered lives.
The True Citizen: How to Become One
William Fisher Markwick
A structured approach to moral growth helps young people transform personal integrity into active, responsible participation in public life.
The Unclassed
George Gissing
A dark, fierce study of late-Victorian urban life, this novel turns an unsparing eye on the lower-middle class and the outcast, asking how far intellectual independence can survive poverty and moral compromise.
The Visions of England: Lyrics on leading men and events in English History
Francis Turner Palgrave
A sweeping sequence of historical portraits captures the soul of an island nation, tracking its long journey from prehistoric coastal shores to modern imperial power.
The Visions of Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
A satirical journey through hell, exposing the vices and follies of humanity with wit and moral insight.
The Warfare of Science
Andrew Dickson White
Across centuries of intellectual struggle, human progress has hinged on a persistent contest between open scientific inquiry and rigid theological dogma.
The Words of Jesus
John R. (John Ross) Macduff
A quiet voice reaches through the darkness to remind a weary soul that every trial is measured by a loving hand.
The Young Captives: A Story of Judah and Babylon
Erasmus W. Jones
Two exiled Judean brothers, their sister, and their cousin Daniel navigate moral corruption, courtly intrigue, and spiritual trial in Babylon while preserving their sacred ancestral faith.
Three Apostles of Quakerism: Popular Sketches of Fox, Penn and Barclay
Benjamin Rhodes
Driven by the conviction that God communicates directly to every human soul, three seventeenth-century leaders built a revolutionary religious movement that defied priests, judges, and kings, ultimately transforming the spiritual and political landscape of their world.
Told in the Coffee House: Turkish Tales
Cyrus Adler
A collection of Turkish tales, offering a glimpse into the culture, humor, and philosophy of Ottoman society through stories told in coffee houses.
Woman in the golden ages
Amelia Gere Mason
For centuries, male historians ignored the inner lives of women or reduced them to footnotes, yet women repeatedly shaped the intellectual and moral heights of human civilization.
Wych Hazel
Susan Warner
A vibrant, headstrong heiress and her enigmatic suitor navigate the social whirlpool of nineteenth-century high society, testing the limits of independence, duty, and mutual devotion under the watchful eyes of protective guardians.
Zone therapy
Wm. H. (William Henry Hope) Fitzgerald
A simple squeeze of the fingers or a press of an aluminum comb against the skin can supposedly halt severe pain, cure obstinate ailments, and unlock the body's hidden electrical network.
A calendar of dinners, with 615 recipes
Marion Harris Neil
Every day of the year receives its own distinct menu, building a complete guide to home dining that turns a manufactured vegetable fat into the foundation of American domestic economy.
A Journey to America in 1834
Robert Heywood
A quiet, methodical record of early nineteenth-century travel, this journal observes a rapidly expanding young republic through the exact, unhurried eyes of an English visitor.
A Lively Bit of the Front: A Tale of the New Zealand Rifles on the Western Front
Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
A young sheep-farmer leaves New Zealand for the trenches of the Western Front, navigating high-seas sabotage, underground dug-outs, and enemy captivity.
A Modern Aladdin
Howard Pyle
A humble peasant boy is swept into a dark world of alchemical secrets, mental mastery, and high-society deception in pre-revolutionary France.
A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
Separated from his home in Africa and forced into Atlantic slavery, an prince navigates shifting fortunes, hard labor, and spiritual trials across the globe before finding faith and refuge in England.
A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824: And the journal of a residence of two years on the Mulgrave
William Lay
A brutal mutiny off a Pacific whaling ship dissolves into a fight for survival when the teenage survivors are left stranded among the isolated coral atolls of the Marshall Islands.