The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 488
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 488 of 988.
The scrap book, Volume 2, No. 2
Various
A single room holds George Washington’s advice, a New Zealand suffragist, a blind traveler in Siberia, and a mysterious immortal who haunts London drawing rooms.
The thread of life
Infanta of Spain Eulalia
A royal voice breaks from the constraints of the Spanish court to advocate for personal independence, rational morality, and the quiet dignity of a life lived without the burden of prejudice.
The trap
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A scholar of the occult and an inquisitive schoolboy uncover a seventeenth-century secret hidden within a mirror, only to find that some doors are meant to remain shut forever.
The True Story of My Parliamentary Struggle
Charles Bradlaugh
Denied a seat by parliamentary majorities despite repeatedly winning election, a nineteenth-century secularist fights for his right to represent his constituents without taking a religious oath.
The United States in the Light of Prophecy
Uriah Smith
Prophetic scripture points directly to the American republic, uncovering how rapid national expansion and emerging spiritual corruptions align with apocalyptic visions of the final world power.
Two Little Knights of Kentucky
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A sudden winter freeze, a hidden bear, and a homeless boy challenge two privileged brothers to prove their chivalry is more than a game.
War Gardens: A Pocket Guide for Home Vegetable Growers
Montague Free
A practical guide to growing vegetables in small spaces, written during World War I to help households contribute to the war effort by increasing food production and reducing reliance on staples like wheat and meat.
Wild Youth, Complete
Gilbert Parker
A captive young wife, a tyrannical old husband, and a romantic neighbor collide on the Saskatchewan prairie in a drama of small-town gossip, sudden violence, and second chances.
With the Black Prince
William O. Stoddard
Young Richard Neville leaves home a boy and comes back a knight, having helped turn the tide of medieval history at sea and on the field of Crécy.
Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study
Unknown
An exhaustive investigation into Victorian industrial life reveals how women in the British printing and binding trades are kept in low-paying, repetitive roles by trade union restrictions, social expectations, and employer calculations.
Yorksher Puddin': A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the Pen of John Hartley
John Hartley
A rich slice of working-class life, where stubborn husbands, sharp-tongued wives, and well-meaning fools clash, laugh, and scrape by.
A Book
Djuna Barnes
In these sketches and stories, human desire acts like an untamed animal, prowling the boundaries of social decorum and the inevitable approach of death. It is a collection that maps the interior landscape of the lonely and the obsessed.
Advanced Bridge
J. B. (Joseph Bowne) Elwell
To master the game is not merely to hold the cards, but to read the intentions of the table and act with absolute precision. This is a technical guide to the strategic landscape of Bridge at the turn of the twentieth century.
Alcatraz
Max Brand
A wild stallion's fight for freedom across the desert hills collides with a red-headed drifting cowboy and a young woman trying to save her father's ranch.
Âmona
Louis Becke
The natural world and human cruelty collide in these accounts from the South Pacific, where the vulnerable suffer under the whims of the powerful and the wild.
An Oration on the Life and Services of Thomas Paine
Robert Green Ingersoll
This tribute serves as a passionate defense of a maligned revolutionary, framing his life as an essential struggle for human liberty against the twin tyrannies of monarchical statecraft and institutional superstition.
Arteriosclerosis and Hypertension, with Chapters on Blood Pressure: 3rd Edition
Louis M. (Louis Marshall) Warfield
This clinical text serves as a practitioner’s guide to the diagnosis and management of circulatory degeneration, emphasizing the essential, often overlooked connection between arterial health and blood pressure regulation.
Back o' the Moon, and other stories
Oliver Onions
A collection of rugged, atmospheric tales from the Yorkshire dales, where the boundary between folklore, history, and the harsh realities of rural life blurs into something enduringly haunting.
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush
Ian Maclaren
A quiet, deeply felt portrait of a Scottish village, this collection of tales finds the profound in the everyday lives, sorrows, and steadfast affections of a rural community.
Bessie and Her Friends
Joanna H. (Joanna Hooe) Mathews
A young girl’s quest to write a book about her family becomes a lesson in patience when a difficult relative tests everyone’s resolve.
Beth Norvell: A Romance of the West
Randall Parrish
An unlikely bond forms between a traveling actress and a mining engineer amidst the rugged isolation of the American West, where secrets, social barriers, and a web of criminal intrigue threaten to pull them apart forever.
Beverly of Graustark
George Barr McCutcheon
HOOK A headstrong American woman finds herself trapped in a high-stakes game of thrones, where the boundary between duty and desire vanishes within the mountain mists of a secret European principality.
Bible Emblems
Edward Eli Seelye
A soul yearning for something greater than itself must look beyond the confines of human effort, finding its only true foundation in the divine power that waits to uphold it.
Birth control laws
Mary Ware Dennett
The movement to modernize American law often clashes with the lingering fears of the past. This examination reveals why outdated statutes regarding reproductive information remain a persistent, harmful shadow over personal liberty.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
Various
This collection captures the mid-nineteenth-century British pulse, blending sharp political commentary on global gold rushes and trade policy with serialized fiction, historical sketches, and cultural critique.
Breaking into the movies
John Emerson
The movies are a business, a dream factory, and a rigorous craft. This guide reveals how the screen turns ambition into celluloid, proving that success requires equal parts technical grit and pure, unadulterated luck.
Brother Against Brother
Oliver Optic
A border-state family is torn apart by the onset of the Civil War, forcing a man of principle to defend his home and his conscience against his own brother.
Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887: Volume 1, Number 11
Unknown
This collection serves as a portal into the intellectual ferment of the late nineteenth century, blending rigorous scientific inquiry with the speculative fringe of human potential. It captures the transition from traditional authority to an era of experimental discovery.
Bunker Bean
Harry Leon Wilson
Bunker Bean is a timid, unremarkable office clerk who transforms his life by convincing himself he is the reincarnation of a mighty, ancient king. This lighthearted tale follows his journey from a bullied, insecure nobody to a man who commands his own destiny, finding love and confidence in the most improbable ways.
Child Versus Parent: Some Chapters on the Irrepressible Conflict in the Home
Stephen S. (Stephen Samuel) Wise
The home is a battleground of competing wills, where the unresolved tensions between generations often erupt into an "irrepressible conflict" that demands both intellectual honesty and moral courage to resolve.
Come Out of the Kitchen! A Romance
Alice Duer Miller
A lighthearted comedy of errors, this tale follows a wealthy bachelor who rents a Southern estate, only to find his new domestic staff is far more than it seems.
Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
A man of the seventeenth century records his daily life with such startling candor that the private habits and public pressures of his era remain as vivid today as they were three hundred years ago.
Dick and Dolly
Carolyn Wells
Two orphaned nine-year-old twins descend upon their maiden aunts’ quiet Connecticut homestead, armed with boundless energy, affectionate hearts, and a knack for turning a peaceful household into a whirlwind of spirited, imaginative play.
Dr. Dumany's Wife
Mór Jókai
A man survives a catastrophic train crash only to find himself haunted by the ghosts of his own fortune. This sweeping narrative chronicles a life sacrificed to the pursuit of wealth, honor, and the elusive nature of happiness.
Dreams and Days: Poems
George Parsons Lathrop
The quiet pulse of late nineteenth-century American life beats within these pages, where the weight of historical memory meets the fragile, fleeting beauty of the natural world.
Evangelists of Art: Picture-Sermons for Children
James Patrick
HOOK This collection of visual meditations invites young readers to discover spiritual truth hidden within the brushstrokes of great nineteenth-century paintings.
From Chart House to Bush Hut: Being the Record of a Sailor's 7 Years in the Queensland Bush
C. W. Bryde
A former sailor swaps the open ocean for the relentless, tangled Queensland scrub, documenting seven years of hard-won lessons in carving a life out of the Australian wilderness.
Gaudeamus! Humorous Poems
Joseph Victor von Scheffel
A lighthearted, rowdy trek through geological eras, student drinking songs, and spectral hauntings, celebrating the irrepressible spirit of mid-19th-century German tavern life.
General History of Connecticut, from Its First Settlement Under George Fenwick to its Latest Period of Amity with Great Britain
Samuel Peters
This provocative, polemical history offers a deeply personal and sharply critical account of Connecticut’s origins and its descent into what the author terms a colonial rebellion against the British Crown.
Georgian Poetry 1918-19
Unknown
This anthology serves as a quiet, definitive snapshot of English verse written in the shadow of the Great War, capturing a generation caught between pastoral tradition and the encroaching reality of a broken world. It represents a specific, intentional literary moment, gathering diverse voices that collectively…
Gertrude's Marriage
W. Heimburg
A young woman’s impulsive marriage to a stranger founders on pride and misunderstanding, leading her to discover whether love can survive the collapse of her most cherished illusions.
Grace O'Malley, Princess and Pirate
Robert Machray
A legendary Irish chieftain navigates the treacherous politics of the Elizabethan era, balancing her role as a clan leader with the desperate, high-stakes maneuvers of a pirate queen.
Historic buildings
Unknown
This collection assembles literary descriptions of the world’s most significant architecture, blending historical inquiry with the evocative observations of famous writers. It serves as both a scholarly survey and a guided tour of human achievement in stone.
History of the United States of America, Volume 9 (of 9)
Henry Adams
The young American republic emerges from the crucible of the War of 1812, finding its footing as a nation forged by conflict, economic upheaval, and the slow, uncertain maturation of a distinct national character.
How to Make Electrical Machines: Containing Full Directions for Making Electrical Machines, Induction Coils, Dynamos, and Many Novel Toys to Be Worked by Electricity
R. A. R. (Reginald Arthur Renaud) Bennett
The spark of discovery begins in the workshop, where humble scraps of wood, wire, and household refuse transform into the electrifying marvels of a new scientific age.
How to See the British Museum in Four Visits
Blanchard Jerrold
A calculated four-part itinerary transforms a vast maze of antiquities and natural wonders into an accessible journey of discovery.
Illustrations of Exotic Entomology, Volume 3
Dru Drury
This third volume serves as the culmination of a lifelong devotion to the documentation of global biodiversity, capturing the delicate morphology of foreign insects through rigorous description and painstaking illustration. It stands as a testament to the intersection of amateur passion and early scientific…
In the Oregon Country: Out-Doors in Oregon, Washington, and California Together with some Legendary Lore, and Glimpses of the Modern West in the Making
George Palmer Putnam
This is an evocative, turn-of-the-century travelogue that captures the untamed spirit of the American West, blending rugged outdoor exploration with local legend and the rapid, often jarring transformation of the frontier.