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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 556 of 711.

The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 05, August 1, 1840
Various
This collection offers a vibrant, eclectic window into the mid-19th-century Irish landscape, blending travel sketches, social satire, and historical curiosities into a singular weekly record.

The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses
Robert Charles Hope
The history of the leper in England is a chronicle of profound social isolation, governed by an agonizing blend of religious ritual and harsh civil exclusion. It explores how a nation defined, contained, and eventually eradicated a misunderstood scourge.

The Life of Col. James Gardiner: Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745
Philip Doddridge
A soldier’s transformation from a life of reckless dissipation to one of profound, unwavering spiritual devotion marks the course of this historical account. It chronicles the journey of a man who found his faith on the battlefield.

The Little Regiment, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War
Stephen Crane
The fog of battle obscures more than just the field; it hides the small, splintered souls of the men tasked with holding the line. These stories strip away the glory of war to reveal the raw, shaking nerves of those caught in its machinery.

The magic speech flower
Melvin Hix
A young boy stumbles upon a magical flower that unlocks the language of the wild, allowing him to converse with birds and beasts in the meadows and woods near his home.

The Maid of Honour: A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Lewis Wingfield
HOOK As the French Revolution brews, a beautiful young marquise is trapped in a decaying fortress with a duplicitous husband, his predatory brothers, and an enigmatic, iron-willed governess.

The man from the river
G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard) Cole
HOOK A quiet riverside town turns into a labyrinth of secrets when a man is found drowned, prompting a high-stakes investigation that uncovers layers of local resentment and hidden motives.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 02: a Cleric in Naples
Giacomo Casanova
A restless young man wanders through 18th-century Italy, chasing fortune and romance with equal parts audacity and reckless charm.

The Motor Boys After a Fortune
Clarence Young
Three adventurous friends race a conniving rival across the country to locate a fabled radium deposit hidden in the treacherous depths of the Grand Canyon.

The New Warden
Ritchie, David G. (David George), Mrs.
A scholarly Warden finds his quiet, intellectual world upended by an ill-advised engagement, forcing a reckoning with his own principles and the true nature of love.

The North-West Passage by land: Being the narrative of an expedition from the Atlantic to the Pacific, undertaken with the view of exploring a route across the continent to British Columbia through British territory, by one of the northern passes in the Rocky Mountains
Milton, William Fitzwilliam, Viscount
The journey begins with an ambitious quest to chart a viable passage across the North American continent to British Columbia. It chronicles a grueling, multi-year expedition through untamed wilderness, shifting from the civilized comforts of the East to the raw, often perilous, frontier of the Rocky Mountains.

The Progressionists, and Angela
Conrad von Bolanden
This 19th-century work of fiction explores the collision between traditional Catholic values and the secular, materialist "progressionist" movement, following a young man's journey from skepticism toward faith. It is a polemical novel of ideas that uses the lives of its characters to debate the moral consequences…

The Rural Life Problem of the United States: Notes of an Irish Observer
Plunkett, Horace Curzon, Sir
HOOK An Irish observer examines the dwindling vitality of American farm life, arguing that the nation’s future depends on a fundamental reconstruction of its rural social and economic fabric.

The School Friends
William Henry Giles Kingston
Two young men diverge onto paths of virtue and vice, leading to starkly different fates in this collection of moralizing tales set across the globe.

The Sharper Detected and Exposed
Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin
To expose the machinery of the card-table is to destroy the power of the cheat. Through a detailed study of sleight-of-hand, this work serves as an essential manual for recognizing the hidden methods of the professional gambler.

The story of the Toys
Mary Harris Toy Dodge
A quiet, earnest chronicle of a Cornish family’s migration to America, this work serves as both a genealogy and a testament to the enduring bonds of faith and kinship. It offers an intimate look at the nineteenth-century immigrant experience, preserved through the lens of one woman’s deep devotion to her ancestors.

The Tiger-Slayer: A Tale of the Indian Desert
Gustave Aimard
A disgraced nobleman seeking redemption in the American frontier finds himself caught in a lethal collision between desperate European settlers and vengeful Apache warriors.

The Winning of the Golden Spurs
Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
The fortunes of war and the weight of a hidden lineage collide in this sweeping tale of an archer and his son during the Hundred Years' War.

The Wood Fire in No. 3
Francis Hopkinson Smith
The fireplace is the beating heart of a New York studio building, drawing a circle of friends together to share the stories that define their lives. This collection of linked tales captures the warmth and camaraderie of a vanishing bohemian world.

To Geyserland: Union Pacific-Oregon Short Line Railroads to the Yellowstone National Park
Edward F. Colborn
A traveler’s guide to the wonders of Yellowstone, this work captures the spirit of early twentieth-century exploration through the lens of a luxury rail and stagecoach tour.

Two Boys and a Fortune
Matthew White
A sudden inheritance and a hidden truth entangle two brothers in a web of anxiety and moral crisis. This story explores how a windfall can test the bonds of family and the weight of conscience.

Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago
Henry William Herbert
This narrative captures a lost world of American field sports, where the rhythm of the seasons and the camaraderie of the hunt define the moral and physical landscape.

Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District
Charles Dack
This collection gathers the vanishing fragments of rural English life, preserving the rhymes, superstitions, and seasonal traditions of the Peterborough district. It serves as a quiet record of a world where weather and human fate were inextricably linked.

What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know
John Dutton Wright
A compassionate, practical guide, this manual empowers parents of deaf children to cultivate communication and character at home, bridging the gap between diagnosis and formal education.

Whatsoever a Man Soweth
William Le Queux
A woman in mortal fear of a mysterious blackmailer finds her only salvation in an old friend, leading them into a dangerous game of deception.

Why not? A book for every woman
Horatio Robinson Storer
A physician’s urgent 19th-century appeal to American women, this text serves as a stark, uncompromising warning against the dangers of induced miscarriage. It functions as a foundational document in the history of medical ethics.

Young Tom Bowling: The Boys of the British Navy
John C. (John Conroy) Hutcheson
A vivid, firsthand account of late nineteenth-century maritime life, this narrative follows a young recruit’s transition from a civilian boy to a seasoned sailor within the British Royal Navy.

A day with the poet Burns
Unknown
A portrait of the legendary Scottish poet, this narrative follows a single day in his life as he balances the toil of an exciseman with the spontaneous, soaring inspirations of his genius.
![Cover of A dialoge or communication of two persons: Deuysyd and set forthe in the late[n] tonge, by the noble and famose clarke. Desiderius Erasmus intituled [the] pylgremage of pure deuotyon. Newly tra[n]slatyd into Englishe](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/a-dialoge-or-communication-of-two-persons-deuysyd-and-set-forthe-in-the.webp)
A dialoge or communication of two persons: Deuysyd and set forthe in the late[n] tonge, by the noble and famose clarke. Desiderius Erasmus intituled [the] pylgremage of pure deuotyon. Newly tra[n]slatyd into Englishe
Desiderius Erasmus
A skeptical traveler and his homebound friend debate the value of visiting holy shrines, revealing a sharp, early-modern critique of religious excess and performative piety.

A Dream of the North Sea
James Runciman
A physician ventures into the brutal, storm-tossed realities of the North Sea fishing grounds to provide medical relief to men who have long been abandoned to the mercy of the elements.

A Flight with the Swallows
Emma Marshall
A sheltered child leaves the quiet cathedral town of her upbringing to confront the wider, more demanding world of duty and loss. Through a journey to the sunny South, a fragile girl discovers that growing up requires stepping outside one’s own heart.

A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada
Susan Morrow Jones
A woman caught between the expectations of London society and the wild, untamed spirit of her Canadian upbringing discovers that true devotion is rarely found in the arrangements of the heartless.

A journal of travels into the Arkansa Territory
Thomas Nuttall
An intrepid botanist journeys into the untamed American frontier of 1819, documenting the flora, the unfolding politics of territory, and the enduring cultures of the indigenous peoples he encounters.

A Plea for Old Cap Collier
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
A boy’s love for sensational, forbidden fiction is often more sensible than the "improving" literature forced upon him by his elders. This witty defense of the dime novel argues that young readers have a natural instinct for honest storytelling.

A Republic Without a President, and Other Stories
Herbert D. (Herbert Dickinson) Ward
A daring act of domestic terrorism spirals into a national crisis, revealing the precarious nature of a modern world built on fragile technological and political foundations. This collection probes the anxieties of an era caught between radical scientific progress and the stubborn persistence of human frailty.

A Truthful Woman in Southern California
Kate Sanborn
A candid, practical guide from the late nineteenth century, this work serves as an essential manual for those seeking health and sunshine in the burgeoning settlements of Southern California.

Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 179-262
Cosmos Mindeleff
An observant, nineteenth-century archaeological survey of the Verde Valley maps the forgotten stone villages, cave dwellings, and irrigation networks left behind by ancient agricultural peoples.

After a shadow, and other stories
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
A collection of moral fables, these stories explore the quiet struggles of everyday life, where character is tested by vanity, debt, and the temptation to live for the approval of others.

An Amiable Charlatan
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A refined gentleman finds his orderly life transformed into a series of daring, illicit adventures when he falls in with a charismatic American and his bewitching daughter.

An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis: or Ulceration Induced by Carbonaceous Accumulation in the Lungs of Coal Miners
Archibald Makellar
The air within a Scottish coal mine is a silent killer, turning the lungs of workers into vessels of black, carbonaceous sludge. This sober medical report exposes the fatal reality of occupational lung disease in the nineteenth century.

An Old Sailor's Yarns
N. (Nathaniel) Ames
Sailors’ lives, defined by the relentless rhythms of the sea and the harsh indifference of authority, unfold here in a series of gritty, observant tales.

Armageddon, 1970
Robert W. Krepps
Humanity stands on the precipice of a silent invasion, caught between warring factions of advanced beings who have long walked among us. When atomic fire rains down on Manhattan, the true cost of our manipulation by these hidden masters finally comes to light.

Arthur
Laurence Binyon
This play finds the legendary Round Table not in the flush of youth, but in the long, cooling shadows of its final, inevitable dissolution. It is a work of high, somber dignity, tracing the fracture of a kingdom through the impossible triangle of a King, his greatest knight, and his Queen.

Australia Felix
Henry Handel Richardson
This is a searching, immersive portrait of a restless man seeking his place in the raw, gold-fevered landscape of mid-nineteenth-century Australia. It captures the psychological toll of migration and the quiet, persistent struggle to belong.

Baby Chatterbox
Anonymous
This collection of poems and short narratives offers a nostalgic window into the Victorian nursery, where every animal, chore, and childhood mishap serves as a gentle lesson in morality, kindness, and order.

Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island
Janet D. Wheeler
A group of schoolgirls discovers a hidden mystery when they find three abandoned children after a dramatic shipwreck near a remote lighthouse. This is a story about the intersection of youthful curiosity, the kindness of strangers, and the sudden, sobering realities of life beyond the classroom.

Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 2, No. 2: August, 1897
Various
This collection of natural history sketches invites readers to look closely at the North American landscape, turning common birds into vivid, intimate companions through the power of early color photography and descriptive prose.

By Proxy
Randall Garrett
HOOK A persistent reporter shadows an arrogant, self-proclaimed genius attempting a revolutionary space flight, only to uncover a complex web of government bureaucracy, stolen credit, and the crushing weight of public fame.