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All free summaries — page 469
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 469 of 714.
Sketches New and Old, Part 1
Mark Twain
Absurdist bureaucracy, small-town posturing, and everyday misadventures collide in a world where good intentions prompt immediate disaster and sheer villainy reaps full social prestige.
St. George and St. Michael
George MacDonald
A tragic civil conflict divides a quiet nation, forcing childhood sweethearts to choose between their clashing allegiances to throne and conscience.
Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land: With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration, and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America
W. C. (William Charles) Wentworth
A native son’s fiery blueprint for Australia’s future demands that Britain transform a brutal penal colony into a self-governing empire of free enterprise.
Stories by American Authors, Volume 3
Various
A shadow of unseen sound; a portrait painted so honestly it breaks the model's heart; a leap into darkness over a stolen promise; a home shattered by a midnight axe—human motives fracture under the lightest strain.
The American Missionary
Various
A Christian society’s monthly journal records its work funding Southern schools, West African missions, and Western outposts while making the case for racial equality and moral reform.
The Anzac Book
Unknown
Under the relentless sun and cold autumn gales of Gallipoli, soldiers huddled in hand-dug earthworks face down mortar fire, illness, and impossible terrain, fashioning art, humor, and dignity directly out of the ashes of campaign hardship.
The Art of Lecturing: Revised Edition
Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
A guide for the aspiring public speaker, this manual offers a practical, no-nonsense look at the craft of lecturing, from the mechanics of voice training to the strategic art of the debate.
The Art of Soul-Winning
J. W. (John Wilmot) Mahood
Uncertainty, awkwardness, and the fear of intrusive meddling often paralyze believers who wish to share their faith directly with others.
The Bay State Monthly
Various
A tapestry of New England life unfolds through biographical portraits, colonial land disputes, Revolutionary histories, and the vibrant civic institutions of a rising nineteenth-century society.
The boys' book of buccaneers
A. Hyatt (Alpheus Hyatt) Verrill
A framed history of Caribbean sea-robbers unveils the grim realities behind famous piratical legends, contrasting popular romantic myths with historical record.
The Canadian: Photoplay title of The Land of Promise
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
A proud, penniless Englishwoman marries a rough Manitoba farmer to escape domestic drudgery, only to find that survival on the harsh Canadian prairie forces a complete reckoning with her pride, her independence, and her heart.
The Chapter Ends
Poul Anderson
A lone survivor refuses to abandon a dying cradle of humanity when the galaxy leaves Earth behind.
The Comforts of Home
Ralph Bergengren
Domestic absurdities become quiet comedy when a writer turns his eye upon cellar stairs, stubborn bureaus, and the unfeeling monster lurking in the furnace room.
The Erie Train Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A plucky seventeen-year-old takes to the rail cars to support his family, only to find that doing the right thing draws both desperate scoundrels and extraordinary luck.
The finding of Jasper Holt
Grace Livingston Hill
Stranded on the Western plains after a train derailment, a minister's daughter must rely on a mysterious local outcast to lead her to safety.
The First Christmas Tree: A Story of the Forest
Henry Van Dyke
A single act of courage in the dark heart of a pagan forest replaces a blood-soaked sacrifice with a living green tree of hope.
The Gate of Remembrance: The Story of the Psychological Experiment which Resulted in the Discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury
Frederick Bligh Bond
A psychological experiment in archaeology, conducted through automatic writing, leads to the discovery of a lost chapel at Glastonbury Abbey.
The hand of Providence
J. H. (Joseph Harvey) Ward
God directs the entire tapestry of human history, using even fallible empires, fallen churches, and heroic revolutionaries as instruments to prepare the earth for the eventual restoration of His true divine kingdom.
The hindered hand
Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert) Griggs
A young African American woman faces a monstrous white loan shark, choosing between lifetime domestic servitude and sending her destitute mother to prison.
The Inner Life: Part 3 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII
John Greenleaf Whittier
To pierce the veil of existence, one must look past the terrifying illusions of human sin and recognize the quiet, enduring light that dwells within every soul.
The Ladies' Knitting and Netting Book
Miss Watts
Precise instructions and exact counting yield a seamless, hands-on workshop in early Victorian needlecraft.
The Line of Love
James Branch Cabell
A line of mortal lovers yields to the illusion of romance, capturing brief, skyey heights of adoration before settling into the sensible, compromising world.
The Man with the Double Heart
Muriel Hine
A young man's diagnosis of a rare cardiac anomaly leaves him convinced he possesses two distinct emotional natures, driving him into romantic entanglements until life forces him to abandon medical myth for genuine devotion.
The Mystery of M. Felix
B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon
A dead man vanishes from a locked room in London, leaving behind a web of lies, a ruined woman, and a dark secret spanning eighteen years.
The Observations of Henry: Illustrated
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
A sharp, observant London waiter recounts the quiet dramas, scandalous hoaxes, and unexpected romantic reconciliations he witnessed across decades of service.
The Radio Detectives Under the Sea
A. Hyatt (Alpheus Hyatt) Verrill
Two young radio enthusiasts are swept into a dangerous Caribbean chase involving hidden submarines, high-tech gadgetry, and ruthless international fugitives.
The Readjustment
Will Irwin
The Readjustment is a quiet, observant study of social migration and the friction between youthful ambition and internal character. It captures the transition of a young man and two women as they navigate their places in early twentieth-century San Francisco.
The River's Children: An Idyl of the Mississippi
Ruth McEnery Stuart
The Mississippi River acts as a silent, powerful guardian over the lives of those who dwell along its banks, binding together a fractured society through the dual forces of danger and grace.
The Rover Boys on a Tour
Edward Stratemeyer
Young collegiate brothers turn a winter debt crisis and high-society road trips into an energetic, cross-country pursuit of an elusive thief.
The Rover's Secret: A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba
Harry Collingwood
Steeped in the salt spray and high-stakes drama of the nineteenth-century Royal Navy, this forgotten sea tale delivers a classic, sweeping adventure across the treacherous pirate-infested waters of the Caribbean.
The Sailor
J. C. (John Collis) Snaith
A boy escapes a childhood of unthinkable violence by running away to sea, only to find that every world he enters requires a different kind of survival.
The Sins of Séverac Bablon
Sax Rohmer
He moves through the dark of London taking fortune from the selfish to arm the nation and feed the poor, leaving only the shadow of a ring and the terror of a righteous thief.
The Spook Ballads
William Theodore Parkes
Strange ghosts, rogue suitors, and scheming scoundrels cross paths in a world where spectral encounters are met with caustic wit, satirical schemes, and lighthearted, rhyming absurdity.
The Statesmen Snowbound
Robert Fitzgerald
The snowbound train offers a peculiar, captive stage for the boisterous, self-important men of the American legislature, who pass the time by trading stories of personal failure, ghosts, and political ruin.
The Subterranean Brotherhood
Julian Hawthorne
A gentlemanly writer steps into the shadows of a federal prison and uncovers an invisible empire of routine cruelty, broken men, and silent endurance.
The Surgery of the Skull and Brain
Louis Bathe Rawling
Precision engineering meets human frailty at the edge of the surgical blade. Early neurosurgery demanded rigorous anatomical knowledge, calm hands, and a willingness to confront massive diagnostic uncertainty.
The Tale of Timber Town
Alfred A. (Alfred Augustus) Grace
The rugged landscape of a frontier gold-mining town serves as the backdrop for a sprawling narrative of fortune, deception, and the complex entanglements of the human heart. It is a story where the allure of sudden wealth tests the moral boundaries of every inhabitant.
The Ties That Bind
Walter M. Miller
A long-isolated fleet of human conquerors returns to a peaceful Earth, bringing the dormant horrors of forgotten history with them.
The Treasure-Train
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A high-society heiress overhears a conspiratorial whisper behind a palm tree in a hotel tearoom, sparking a chain of encounters with modern crime.
The United States Since the Civil War
Charles Ramsdell Lingley
A nation emerging from the Civil War attempts to rebuild its democracy while transforming into a corporate power, navigating class conflicts, party machinery, and world war.
The Wanderings of Persiles and Sigismunda: A Northern Story
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Two royal lovers disguise their identities and journey across treacherous northern seas and continental Europe toward Rome, fleeing forced marriages and fatal rivalries.
The war against Japan: Pictorial record
Kenneth E. Hunter
A vast ocean becomes a brutal proving ground where men, machines, and harsh geography collide across thousands of miles of isolated islands.
The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Volume 1 of 3: An account of the mutiny of the crew and the loss of the ship when trying to make the Bermudas
William Clark Russell
In the vast, churning solitude of the high seas, the thin veneer of order aboard a merchant ship shatters when hunger and resentment turn a crew into a volatile, murderous mob. This is a harrowing portrait of survival, where the line between civilization and savagery is as precarious as a rotting deck in a gale.
Their island home
Jules Verne
A marooned family expands their self-made paradise into a thriving island settlement while charting unknown territory and scanning the empty horizon for rescue.
Ticktock and Jim
Keith Robertson
A lonely afternoon turns into an unexpected partnership when a farm boy trades his grandfather’s prized watch for a tiny, spirited Texas mustang.
Twenty-Five Village Sermons
Charles Kingsley
Everyday life is infused with the sacred, transforming ordinary work, natural beauty, and human community into places where God actively meets His people.
Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation
John Bovee Dods
A comprehensive exploration of the doctrine of universal salvation, arguing for the eventual redemption of all souls through divine love and justice.
Vahram's chronicle of the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia, during the time of the Crusades
Vahram
Driven by Turkish conquests and Byzantine intrigue, medieval Armenian leaders carved out a new mountain haven, building a resilient state along the Mediterranean shore.