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All free summaries — page 550
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 550 of 988.
Three Loving Ladies
Mrs. Dowdall
A woman’s desire to shield her children from institutional severity clashes with her husband’s rigid sense of duty in a wealthy Northern port.
Why Marry?
Jesse Lynch Williams
A bright, fiercely intelligent young woman refuses to marry the scientist she loves, arguing that legal matrimony will destroy their equality and his career—setting off a weekend of hysterical panic among her traditional family.
Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas
Lloyd Osbourne
A white man in a home-made Samoan hut looks out past his woven coconut curtains, knowing his quiet life of independence with his native wife is about to end in war.
William Morris: A Critical Study
John Drinkwater
An energetic youth amidst Essex woodlands grows into a lifelong crusade to reclaim art, work, and community from modern industrial ugliness.
Young Hunters in Porto Rico
Edward Stratemeyer
Stranded by storms and guided by a rescued Englishman’s secret map, four American youths sail to newly annexed Porto Rico to unearth buried treasure before a ruthless rival beats them to the vault.
A Bold Stroke for a Husband: A Comedy in Five Acts
Hannah Cowley
A spirited comedy of manners set in Spain, this play follows two women navigating the constraints of marriage and courtship with wit, disguise, and strategic subversion.
A Bottle in the Smoke: A Tale of Anglo-Indian Life
Janet Milne Rae
The tropical sun of British India illuminates a young woman’s disillusionment, revealing the fragile, often deceptive nature of colonial life. A narrative of moral awakening, the story charts the journey of a bride who finds that behind the gilded surface of her new world lie rot, crime, and the redemption of truth.
A Boy's Experience in the Civil War, 1860-1865
Thomas Hughes
Witnessing the transformation of a city under siege, a young boy observes the final, fading years of the Confederacy from the vantage point of Richmond. These recollections provide a rare, intimate view of a society in the grip of existential collapse.
A Channel Passage and Other Poems: Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Waves crash against high cliffs, and a soul leaps into mountain waters, seeking a purity that outshines human fear. From coastal gales to quiet English gardens, these verses measure man's fleeting place against nature's enduring light and righteous laws.
A Mummer's Wife
George Moore
A small-town dressmaker leaves her husband for a touring actor, only to find that freedom carries its own brutal price.
A Thoughtless Yes
Helen H. (Helen Hamilton) Gardener
A world of rigid social rules, moral blind spots, and snap judgments is quietly unmasked in these sharp, insightful stories.
Alida
Amelia Stratton Comfield
A young woman navigating the social pressures and personal tragedies of the American Revolutionary era learns to balance youthful emotion with the stoic demands of duty and faith.
All in the dark
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The mysteries of memory and the burdens of expectation weigh heavily on the young, but often resolve in the most mundane of ways. This narrative explores the quiet anxieties of a displaced nephew and the eccentric, sometimes suffocating, love of the aunt who raised him.
Are We of Israel?
George Reynolds
This exploration of historical, scriptural, and traditional evidence argues that modern-day believers share a literal ancestry with the ancient house of Israel. It seeks to uncover the identity of the descendants of the lost tribes.
Attack: An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916
Edward G. D. (Edward George Downing) Liveing
This is a searing, immediate account of a young officer’s experience during the opening of the Battle of the Somme. It captures the transition from the mundane routines of war to the sudden, chaotic violence of an infantry assault.
Billy Whiskers at Home
Frances Trego Montgomery
This episodic narrative follows a wandering goat and his animal companions as they return to their original home, only to find that their thirst for adventure has not been quenched by farm life. It is a lighthearted, sentimental chronicle of animal camaraderie that celebrates the loyalty and pluck of its…
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, combative snapshot of Victorian intellectual life, capturing the era’s fierce religious anxieties, political turbulence, and deep-seated preoccupation with national identity.
Boy Scouts on the Open Plains
G. Harvey (George Harvey) Ralphson
The open range holds more than cattle for a band of scouts who trade the desert for the dangers of the American West. When duty and peril collide, the boys must learn that true courage is found in the most unlikely of allies.
Calvinistic Controversy: Embracing a Sermon on Predestination and Election and Several Numbers, Formally Published in the Christian Advocate and Journal
Wilbur Fisk
This collection of theological arguments defends the Arminian perspective on human agency, insisting that God invites repentance and that individuals possess the capacity to accept or reject divine grace.
Coaching Days & Ways
E. D. (Edward William Dirom) Cuming
The rhythm of hooves and the crack of the whip once dictated the pulse of England, turning the high road into a theater of daring skill, reckless speed, and inevitable, often grisly, calamity.
Comedies of Courtship
Anthony Hope
This collection of stories explores the tangled, often humorous, and perpetually indecisive nature of romantic pursuit among the leisured classes of the late nineteenth century.
Consolations in Travel
Davy, Humphry, Sir
A dying philosopher travels through Italy and the Alps, using dialogue and vision to reconcile scientific truth with spiritual immortality.
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Pride and violent contempt turn Rome’s greatest protector into its deadliest threat when a warrior refuses to bow before the public he considers beneath him.
Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight
George William Curtis
Two young idealists step away from mid-nineteenth-century American conventions to live, farm, and reflect together, initiating a lifelong bond defined by art, transcendental philosophy, and mutual devotion.
Elegy
Charles Beaumont
A desperate crew of space-faring survivors discovers an impossible, pristine city upon a lonely asteroid, only to realize that their sanctuary is a final, frozen destination.
Field Mice as Farm and Orchard Pests
David E. (David Ernest) Lantz
Small, overlooked creatures can cause catastrophic destruction to American agriculture, proving that even the most modest animals demand serious management and strategic intervention from those who tend the land.
Fire at Red Lake: Sandy Steele Adventures #4
Robert Leckie
Three teenagers on a camping trip discover that their wilderness vacation holds a hidden, high-stakes danger: a lost atomic bomb. Their survival depends on navigating both a raging forest fire and this unsettling secret.
First Lessons in Natural Philosophy for Beginners
Joseph C. (Joseph Comly) Martindale
HOOK The world is a laboratory of simple wonders, where a child’s ordinary observation of a snapping fire or a rising bubble serves as the first step toward understanding the complex laws governing all physical existence.
For Sceptre and Crown: A Romance of the Present Time. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Gregor Samarow
The chess match of nineteenth-century European power politics unfolds, where the shifting loyalties of monarchs and the calculated maneuvers of statesmen drive a continent toward the inevitable clash of the Austro-Prussian War.
Fort Concho: Its Why and Wherefore
James N. (James Noble) Gregory
The history of Fort Concho reveals the strategic struggle to tame the Texas frontier, serving as a vital link between the early days of westward migration and the final settlement of the Southern Plains.
Germany's Fighting Machine: Her Army, her Navy, her Air-ships and Why She Arrayed Them Against the Allied Powers of Europe
Ernest F. (Ernest Flagg) Henderson
The onset of the Great War is captured through the lens of a traveler caught between admiration for German institutions and the sudden, violent collapse of European peace. This urgent dispatch offers a contemporary perspective on the military apparatus that defined the conflict’s opening months.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3, September 1850
Various
This mid-century periodical captures the intellectual and creative pulse of 1850, blending literary analysis, fiction, and poetry into a diverse mosaic of the American Victorian consciousness.
Grampa in Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
A grizzled soldier and a young prince embark on a whimsical, dangerous odyssey to restore a lost royal head, stumbling into the vibrant, chaotic corners of a land where anything can happen.
Grit A-Plenty: A Tale of the Labrador Wild
Dillon Wallace
The Labrador wilderness tests the resolve of two teenage brothers, whose dangerous winter trapping expedition becomes a race against time to fund a life-saving medical procedure for their younger sibling.
Gun running for Casement in the Easter rebellion, 1916
Karl Spindler
This gripping account documents a German naval officer’s clandestine mission to deliver arms to Irish revolutionaries during the 1916 Easter Rising. It is a high-stakes chronicle of espionage, maritime endurance, and eventual imprisonment.
Harper's Young People, October 11, 1881: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
This illustrated weekly periodical from 1881 serves as a time capsule of Victorian childhood, blending moral instruction, natural history, and serialized fiction. It offers a window into an era that valued both rigorous intellectual cultivation and the simple joys of a well-told story.
In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael
Katharine Lee Bates
Pilarica and Rafael’s journey from a tranquil, sun-drenched garden to the rugged northern reaches of Spain serves as a gentle, lyrical introduction to the landscapes, folklore, and traditions of a country long past.
In the Saddle
Oliver Optic
The Civil War is not merely a clash of armies, but a fracture of the home, where young men must choose between the comfort of their kin and the call of their conscience.
International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science
Various
A kaleidoscopic Victorian miscellany captures a mid-nineteenth-century world in rapid transition, juxtaposing European literary gossip with gold-rush grit, spiritual histories, and trenchant satire.
John Sherman
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
A man torn between the quiet, mossy corners of his youth and the bustling, hollow demands of the city wanders toward a final, irreparable confrontation with his own choices. This quiet, melancholic narrative explores the fragility of identity when faced with the relentless, crushing pressure of expectation.
Left Tackle Thayer
Ralph Henry Barbour
A reluctant young athlete learns that staying on the sidelines is far harder than stepping into the game.
Little Jack Rabbit's big blue book
David Cory
This collection of animal tales invites young readers into a whimsical, domestic version of the natural world where rabbits wear knickers and birds keep house in hollow trees. It serves as a gentle, episodic bridge between the security of the family hearth and the minor, thrilling perils of the outside world.
Making the Most of Life
J. R. (James Russell) Miller
A purposeful life requires constant moral vigilance, unselfish service, and the quiet surrender of personal ease.
May Iverson's Career
Elizabeth Garver Jordan
This chronicle follows a young, ambitious convent graduate as she navigates the competitive world of New York journalism and eventually finds success as a playwright. It is a portrait of a woman claiming her own voice.
Monk
Julian Stafford Corbett
The man who steered England through the chaos of its most turbulent century, George Monck, remains a figure of quiet, iron-willed endurance. He stands as the singular, steady hand that brought a fractured nation back from the brink of perpetual civil war.
Mother Stories from the New Testament: A Book of the Best Stories from the New Testament that Mothers can tell their Children
Anonymous
A domestic collection of classic narratives uses gentle prose to introduce young readers to foundational Gospel lessons.
Motor Matt Makes Good
Stanley R. Matthews
A young mechanical genius and his loyal crew navigate a perilous submarine voyage along the Chilian coast, locked in a high-stakes duel with a band of fanatical saboteurs.
Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
The secrets of a Cornish manor house unravel in a dark, atmospheric drama where deep-seated jealousies lead to a cycle of vengeance and, ultimately, a search for redemption.