The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 5
1,474 public-domain books, summarised. Page 5 of 31.
Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1923: The unique magazine
Various
A restless, shadow-drenched collection, this inaugural gathering of tales probes the fragile boundary between the orderly world of men and the encroaching, inexplicable darkness that waits just beyond the porch light.
Unnatural death
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
The scent of a quiet death often hides the sharpest blade, and for those who look closely, a natural end is rarely as simple as it seems.
Changeling, and Other Stories
Donn Byrne
The stories in this collection are not merely tales, but invitations to walk among the ghosts of old Ireland and the harsh, bright streets of the New World, where the line between the mundane and the miraculous is as thin as a veil.
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
An old inn, a secret map, and a desperate race to a remote island—the hunt for buried gold begins with a dying sailor’s final, terrifying secret.
Pen-portraits of literary women
Unknown
These portraits offer a glimpse into the private lives and public struggles of the women who defined nineteenth-century literature, revealing the human cost behind their enduring masterpieces.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
The river carries a boy and a runaway man toward a freedom that seems to vanish the closer they get, revealing the hard, strange truth of a country divided against itself.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A lonely girl finds herself swept from a gray prairie into a vibrant world of magic, where she must lead three unlikely outcasts on a quest to find the power they already possess.
The Enchanted April
Elizabeth Von Arnim
A dreary London February gives way to a life-altering April when two neglected wives answer a newspaper advertisement, escaping their stifling marriages for the sun-drenched, wistaria-laden splendor of an Italian medieval castle.
The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
The world is a stage where the actors are prone to tripping over their own feet, yet somehow, they always manage to find their way to a graceful exit. These tales offer a generous look at the absurd, charming, and occasionally tangled lives of those who believe they have everything under control, until the moment…
One Woman: Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex
Alfred Ollivant
The quiet majesty of the Sussex Downs provides the backdrop for a story of a woman whose strength is tested by the shifting tides of war, love, and the crushing weight of poverty.
Only a girl's love
Charles Garvice
The quiet, solitary life of an artist is shattered when his niece, Stella, appears at his studio door like a sudden, beautiful vision. Her arrival triggers a series of events that pull them both into the orbit of the powerful and aristocratic Wyndward family, setting the stage for a story of deep affection, social…
Desperate Remedies
Thomas Hardy
A young woman’s peaceful life is shattered when her secret lover abruptly abandons her, drawing her into a labyrinthine plot of mistaken identities, forced servitude, and a marriage built on a terrifying deception.
Famous Affinities of History: The Romance of Devotion. Vol 1-4, Complete
Lyndon Orr
The magnetic pull of the heart often defies the gravity of duty, leaving behind a trail of broken crowns, scorched reputations, and rewritten histories that haunt the collective memory of the world.
Two on a Tower
Thomas Hardy
What if the person you love most in the world is the one obstacle standing between you and your destiny, and the stars themselves offer no comfort for your earthly silence?
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Malory, Thomas, Sir
The legend of Arthur is a tapestry of honor, betrayal, and the heavy weight of a crown. It endures because it speaks to the conflict between our highest ideals and the human failings that inevitably pull them apart.
A Heart-Song of To-day (Disturbed by Fire from the 'Unruly Member'): A Novel
Annie G. (Annie Gregg) Savigny
The high-society stage is set with gleaming ballrooms and whispered scandals, where one's reputation is a currency as fragile as a silken fan and twice as likely to be snapped in two. In this world of gilded drawing rooms and cold-hearted maneuvers, the truth is merely a card to be played when the stakes are highest.
One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
James Grant
The road to glory is paved with heartache, and for the young men of the light cavalry, the charge into history begins long before the first cannon fires.
The Murder on the Links
Agatha Christie
The game is afoot before the train even leaves the station, when a sharp-tongued girl in a rakish red hat greets a stranger with a single, unladylike exclamation.
The Amazing Marriage
George Meredith
A woman of mountain origins and untamed spirit marries a nobleman whose pride is his prison, setting in motion a collision between raw, vital truth and the rigid, suffocating artifice of English high society.
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Four brothers, a father who embodies chaos, and a murder that forces every soul to reckon with the existence of God.
The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen: A Linked Index of all PG Editions of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
A keen eye for the absurdities of human vanity defines these narratives, where the quiet friction of social expectation often holds more weight than the grandest of romantic gestures.
The Anabasis of Alexander
Arrian
A relentless engine of conquest transforms the known world, leaving behind a wake of ruined cities and a king whose ambition demands not just victory, but total submission.
The Iliad
Homer
The anger of one man shifts the tides of war, dragging gods and mortals into a cycle of slaughter that only ends when pride finally yields to the sorrow of being human.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald
The past is a phantom that haunts the present, urging us to run faster toward a future that is always just out of reach.
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
The moors hold secrets that time cannot bury, weaving a cycle of vengeance and longing that spans two generations. In this harsh landscape, love is not a comfort, but a force that shatters everyone it touches.
The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
Alexandre Dumas
The French Revolution rages, but the most dangerous battles are fought behind palace doors, where a king struggles to lock his secrets away from a nation he no longer controls.
The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
Gustave Aimard
In the sun-scorched, unforgiving borderlands of Sonora, a handful of desperate souls collide in a lethal race for a sunken fortune, where the only currency more valuable than gold is a steady hand and a loyal heart.
That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
Richard Dehan
The shadow of a coming war looms over the lives of a young aristocratic couple, transforming their private world of luxury into a high-stakes arena of espionage, aerial combat, and ultimate sacrifice.
Linnet: A Romance
Grant Allen
In the shadow of the Tyrolean Alps, a peasant girl with a voice like a mountain brook finds herself caught between the ancient constraints of her village and the dazzling, dangerous freedom of the wider world.
Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
A man of leisure finds a corpse in a stranger’s bathroom and discovers that the most brilliant minds are sometimes the most dangerous.
The Pirate: Andrew Lang Edition
Walter Scott
The sea-swept islands of the north hold secrets that only the wild winds can carry. Beneath the gaze of an ancient, brooding hermit, lives become tangled in a dance of superstition, honor, and a dangerous, hidden history.
Ecce Homo: Complete Works, Volume Seventeen
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
To read this book is to walk the razor’s edge of a singular, brilliant, and fracturing consciousness. It is the final testament of a man who, having dismantled the architecture of human morality, turns his gaze inward to explain how he came to stand alone on the peaks.
Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
The woods of old England hold more than mere outlaws; they shelter the shifting loyalties of a kingdom at war, where a single arrow might decide the fate of both kings and commoners.
The Bakhtyār Nāma: A Persian Romance
William Ouseley
A prince stands on the precipice of execution, accused of a crime he did not commit, while his father’s ministers clamor for his blood. Only the art of storytelling can stall the blade and reveal the truth.
Peter Pan
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
The nursery window is the thin, fragile threshold between the mundane world of domestic duty and a wilder, eternal state of childhood where time does not exist.
Tarrano the Conqueror
Ray Cummings
The future is a landscape of shimmering cities and cold, calculated conquest, where the lives of three worlds hang upon the whims of a single, brilliant, and terrifying man.
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
T. (Tobias) Smollett
A master of the art of deception charts a path of ruin across Europe, finding that the most dangerous traps are often those we set for ourselves.
Cameron of Lochiel
Philippe Aubert de Gaspé
A story of shifting loyalties and enduring grace, where the weight of the past meets the demands of a new world.
Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem
J. Lesslie (John Lesslie) Hall
A hero stands against the dark, wielding only the strength of his own hands to cleanse a hall of ancient, ravenous malice.
The problem of Cell 13
Jacques Futrelle
A man who claims that any puzzle can be solved through pure logic offers to escape from a maximum-security prison cell, relying only on his own formidable, unrivaled brain.
Grimms' Fairy Tales
Jacob Grimm
Wicked enchantresses, talking beasts, and golden birds await in a landscape where the boundary between the mundane and the magical is razor-thin. These tales reveal that fortune often favors the humble, provided they possess the courage to walk through the dark.
Cranford
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
In a quiet English village where propriety is the only currency, a group of gentlewomen maintains a delicate, vanishing world of lace, tea-drinking, and strict social etiquette.
Susan B. Anthony: Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian
Alma Lutz
A singular life, carved from grit and an unwavering belief that the promise of the Declaration of Independence must include every citizen, regardless of gender.
Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
Unknown
The veil between the living and the dead is often thinner than we dare to believe, waiting only for a quiet moment or a sudden shadow to reveal what we have spent a lifetime ignoring.
She who sleeps
Sax Rohmer
A young man encounters a mysterious woman in a dream-like vision, setting in motion a desperate, obsessive quest to uncover an ancient secret buried beneath the sands of Egypt.
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Henry Fielding
An abandoned infant, discovered in the bed of a wealthy, upright bachelor, grows into a man whose natural goodness is constantly thwarted by the schemes of those around him and his own impulsive heart.
What Will People Say? A Novel
Rupert Hughes
Behind the glittering facade of New York’s elite, secrets are the only currency that truly matters, and the price of spending them is often a life left in ruins.
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
T. (Tobias) Smollett
A travel-weary hypochondriac wanders through the British countryside, his disgruntled family in tow, only to discover that the world is far more chaotic—and surprisingly tender—than his bitter letters first suggest.