The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 560
34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 560 of 711.
Hawtrey's Deputy
Harold Bindloss
A man embarks on a desperate, near-fatal voyage to the Arctic, leaving behind a woman caught between his quiet, unselfish strength and the persistent, flawed man she previously promised to marry.
Her Husband's Purse
Helen Reimensnyder Martin
A penniless young woman from the South enters a stifling Pennsylvania marriage, only to find her survival depends on outmaneuvering a husband and two sisters-in-law who view her as a costly, rebellious possession.
Hester: A Story of Contemporary Life, Volume 3 (of 3)
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A woman of immense capability faces the sudden ruin of her family bank and the devastating betrayal of the man she considers her son, ultimately confronting the limits of her own formidable will.
History of Liberia: Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science
J. H. T. (John Hanson Thomas) McPherson
This examination of the West African republic charts the intersection of nineteenth-century American social policy and the ambitious, fragile experiment of establishing a self-governing nation for free Black colonists.
Honeycomb
Dorothy M. (Dorothy Miller) Richardson
A young woman navigates the stifling expectations of early 20th-century life, seeking to preserve her inner autonomy against the encroaching demands of family, social class, and gendered roles.
In Mesopotamia
Maurice Nicoll
HOOK A physician chronicles the brutal, sweltering reality of medical service in the Mesopotamian campaign, where the greatest enemies are not bullets, but heat, thirst, and the fraying of the human spirit.
Intra Muros
Rebecca Ruter Springer
A dying woman awakens to a vivid, expansive vision of the afterlife, where the familiar comforts of earth are not lost, but perfected. This narrative bridges the gap between the mortal and the divine, offering a gentle glimpse into what lies beyond the threshold of death.
Jesus, The Messiah
Anonymous
The ancient scriptures and the life of Jesus form an interlocking puzzle, revealing a single, cohesive design that transcends time and human expectation. This work demonstrates how the long-awaited promises of the past find their ultimate realization in the person of the Messiah.
Killing for Sport: Essays by Various Writers
Unknown
The slaughter of animals for pleasure is not a sign of masculine vitality, but a moral failure that stunts the human capacity for compassion.
Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic
Olive Thorne Miller
A housebound girl spends a dreary afternoon listening to a series of moral and adventurous tales, discovering that even the most disappointing days can hold unexpected treasures of human kindness and resilience.
Lefty Locke, pitcher-manager
Burt L. Standish
HOOK A star pitcher battles a duplicitous secretary for control of a baseball team, uncovering a web of high-stakes fraud and personal vendettas in the process.
Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine
R. B. (Richard Baxter) Townshend
A hardened American prospector finds himself entangled in the volatile, cross-cultural conflicts of the New Mexico frontier, where greed and ancient tribal honor collide under a vast desert sky.
Madame Claire
Susan Ertz
The wisdom of an elderly woman transforms the lives of her family, proving that age is no barrier to shaping the future. This elegant novel explores the intricate, often hidden, connections between generations.
Members of the Family
Owen Wister
The American West is not a destination in this collection of stories, but a landscape of shifting memories and vanishing frontiers. These tales capture the rugged, often lonely character of a life defined by vast distances and hard-won resilience.
Memlinc
J. Cyril M. (James Cyril M.) Weale
Hans Memling stands as a quiet giant of the fifteenth-century Flemish school, a painter whose serene, meditative works transformed the religious iconography of his era through a profound, disciplined, and deeply humanizing lens.
Men of the Bible
Dwight Lyman Moody
These biographical sketches distill the lives of iconic biblical figures into urgent, practical lessons on faith, surrender, and the transformative power of a single decision. Through these portraits, the reader is invited to examine the nature of commitment and the cost of following a divine call.
Mercadet: A Comedy in Three Acts
Honoré de Balzac
The ultimate gambler, a man whose life is a precarious stack of IOUs, attempts to orchestrate his own financial salvation by marrying off his daughter to a wealthy suitor. It is a cynical, high-stakes comedy where credit is the only god and "honesty" is merely a failed business strategy.
Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad
John Kendrick Bangs
A whimsical traveler and his toy companions journey from the quiet of home to the wonders of Europe, only to discover that the truest comfort lies in the familiar. This lighthearted tale follows a curious, eccentric character as he navigates the complexities of foreign travel with a logic all his own.
Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books, December, 1901
Unknown
This catalog serves as a snapshot of the intellectual and social landscape of late Victorian England, revealing the vast range of literature available at the turn of the century. It functions not as a narrative, but as a meticulously organized window into the preoccupations of an empire at the dawn of the twentieth…
My Lords of Strogue, Vol. 3 (of 3): A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union
Lewis Wingfield
In the shadow of the Act of Union, a nation’s crumbling sovereignty mirrors the fractured lives of those bound by blood, betrayal, and the desperate search for liberty.
My Southern Home
William Wells Brown
This collection of sketches blends memoir, observation, and social commentary, offering an intimate look at the realities of life in the American South before and after the Civil War. It captures the resilient spirit of a people navigating systemic oppression with wit, faith, and endurance.
Notes and Queries, Number 11, January 12, 1850
Various
A Victorian intellectual parlor in print, this journal serves as a collaborative clearinghouse where curious minds trade historical minutiae, literary mysteries, and folklore. It represents the nascent age of crowdsourced knowledge, where a query in one corner of the empire meets a scholarly response from another.
Notes and Queries, Number 18, March 2, 1850
Various
This weekly collection of scholarly correspondence offers a fascinating glimpse into the nineteenth-century obsession with historical minutiae, where amateur historians and experts trade knowledge like currency across the pages of a burgeoning intellectual network.
Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This Victorian periodical serves as a sprawling, collaborative clearinghouse for historical, linguistic, and literary trivia. It invites educated readers to trade specialized knowledge, turning intellectual curiosity into a communal, ongoing research project.
Nuggets in the Devil's Punch Bowl, and Other Australian Tales
Andrew Robertson
These tales capture the rugged spirit of the Australian frontier, where fortune is often found in the dirt and the line between honest toil and desperate deceit is thinner than a shearer’s blade.
Nullification, Secession, Webster's Argument, and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions: Considered in Reference to the Constitution and Historically
Caleb William Loring
This work provides a rigorous legal and historical defense of the American Union, arguing that the Constitution established a permanent, sovereign nation rather than a revocable compact between independent states.
Orphans of the Void
Michael Shaara
An interstellar mission uncovers a desolate planet where thousands of metal beings have waited for twenty-five millennia. Their existence is defined by a singular, tragic imperative: to serve masters who perished long ago.
Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls
Various
This collection offers a vibrant, immersive time capsule of 1865, blending moral instruction, natural history, and adventurous tales designed to capture the imagination of the post-Civil War generation.
Palissy the Huguenot Potter: A True Tale
C. L. (Cecilia Lucy) Brightwell
This narrative chronicles the life of Bernard Palissy, a 16th-century French potter and naturalist whose relentless pursuit of artistic perfection and religious integrity sustained him through a lifetime of poverty, persecution, and civil war. It is a portrait of a man who found beauty in the earth and courage in…
Pierre and Luce
Romain Rolland
In the shadow of the Great War, two young Parisians discover a private sanctuary of love, holding tight to one another as the world around them descends into systematic destruction.
Po-No-Kah: An Indian Tale of Long Ago
Mary Mapes Dodge
This tale of pioneer peril captures the stark contrast between the security of a settled home and the terrifying vulnerability of the American frontier. It follows a family’s desperate resilience after a sudden abduction tears their world apart.
Portia
Duchess
A high-society household is fractured by a shameful accusation, leaving a young woman to navigate the tension between her own cold judgment and the magnetic, misunderstood man she is expected to despise.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, March 12, 1919
Various
This collection of wit and commentary captures the singular, weary, and eccentric atmosphere of London in the spring of 1919, as a society attempts to laugh while navigating the strange, lingering debris of the Great War.
Random Shots from a Rifleman
J. (John) Kincaid
A veteran’s firsthand account of the Napoleonic Wars captures the gritty, often darkly humorous realities of life in the ranks with remarkable candor and wit.
Rattle of bones
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A grim traveler, driven by a rigid moral code, finds himself trapped in a tavern where the line between natural evil and supernatural retribution dissolves into a night of terror.
Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876
John William Burgess
A scholarly reassessment of the decade following the American Civil War, this work argues that the era’s political failures stemmed from a profound misunderstanding of constitutional law and the nature of the Union.
Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First: Being the First Book
Sarah L. Barrow
This playful tale follows a group of high-spirited New York boys who, fired by the patriotic fervor of the American Civil War, organize themselves into a miniature regiment. It is a portrait of Victorian childhood, where imagination and mimicry serve as the primary engines of growth.
Right End Emerson
Ralph Henry Barbour
A spirited, classic tale of schoolboy rivalry, where the true test of grit happens as much behind a store counter as it does on the gridiron.
Ring Once for Death
Robert Arthur
The power of the old gods is no match for modern skeptics, yet this tale warns that even those who dismiss superstitions may find themselves ensnared by the cruel symmetry of fate.
Salmagundi
Washington Irving
This collection of satirical essays serves as a sharp, spirited mirror held up to early 19th-century New York. It blends sophisticated urban observation with a playful, self-deprecating affection for the absurdities of social life.
Savva and the Life of Man: Two plays by Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Andreyev
These two plays explore the friction between the fragility of human existence and the immense, indifferent forces that govern it. They serve as a stark, uncompromising mirror to the volatility of early twentieth-century Russian life.
Sentiment, Inc
Poul Anderson
A brilliant but dangerous man uses a revolutionary machine to manipulate the emotions of others, forcing an ordinary engineer to become an unlikely saboteur to win back the woman he loves.
Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema
Helen Zimmern
A master of light and marble, this painter transformed the ancient world into a vivid, domestic stage of sun-drenched leisure and quiet human drama.
Stand By The Union
Oliver Optic
A young Union naval officer must outwit his Confederate lookalike cousin to reclaim command of his ship and protect the nation’s interests during the height of the American Civil War.
Stories of Heroic Deeds for Boys and Girls: Historical Series - Book II
James Johonnot
Noble examples of courage and integrity serve as the foundation for this collection of historical narratives, designed to inspire young minds through the study of human character.
That Gospel Sermon on the Blessed Hope
Dwight Lyman Moody
This transcript preserves a powerful, urgent sermon centered on the imminent return of Jesus Christ. It serves as an earnest invitation for believers to live in constant, watchful expectation of a transformative future event.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Part 6
Mark Twain
The village of St. Petersburg is a place of small-town gossip, hidden treasures, and deep-seated fears. Beneath the surface of childhood play, a dark secret binds two boys to a murderer.
The Boy Scouts Under Fire in Mexico
John Henry Goldfrap
Four American scouts venture into the chaos of the Mexican Revolution to recover a lost fortune, testing their mettle against both the hazards of the frontier and the uncertainty of war.