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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 568 of 711.
The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts
Honoré de Balzac
A rigid, aging soldier’s unshakable hatred for the past invites tragedy into his own home, where his stepmother, daughter, and a hidden suitor collide in a desperate, deadly game of deception.
The Swan of Vilamorta
Pardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de
A self-absorbed poet descends into a provincial village, mistaking his own vanity for grand romantic tragedy. This character study dissects the lethal disconnect between artistic pretension and the messy reality of human devotion.
The Telegraph Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A penniless orphan arrives in New York City with nothing but his wits, determined to carve out a respectable life through honest, hard work. He soon discovers that character is the ultimate currency in a bustling, unforgiving metropolis.
The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This short piece invites us to observe the human condition from the quiet vantage point of a bridge toll-house, where the entire world seems to pass in a single, flickering day.
The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications: A Handbook for Practical Workers in the Tuberculosis Campaign
Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
Public health nursing is a demanding, systematic campaign to bring order to the chaos of infectious disease. This handbook serves as a professional blueprint for organizing effective community interventions against tuberculosis.
The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918
Various
This collection of essays, cultural critiques, and editorial commentary serves as a spirited, opinionated window into the intellectual anxieties and high-minded ambitions of American thinkers during the final months of the Great War.
The Water of Life, and Other Sermons
Charles Kingsley
These sermons offer a vigorous, muscular theology that finds the presence of a living God not in remote abstractions, but in the grime, sickness, and social duties of nineteenth-century London. They serve as a bridge between the traditional pulpit and the emerging demands of a modern, industrialized society.
The Wishing Moon
Louise Dutton Fillmore
A young girl and a boy from opposite sides of the tracks navigate a small town’s suffocating social hierarchies, finding that true connection requires more than just desire—it demands the courage to wait.
Tracts on the Sabbath
Unknown
This collection of religious arguments examines the historical and theological case for observing the seventh-day Sabbath. It challenges the conventional shift to the first day of the week, urging a return to what the authors term the "Bible Sabbath.
Trial of John Jasper, lay precentor of Cloisterham Cathedral in the County of Kent, for the murder of Edwin Drood, engineer
England) Dickens Fellowship (London
A playful, high-stakes literary experiment, this transcript captures a 1914 mock trial where prominent writers and critics gather to settle the century’s most famous unfinished mystery. By placing the characters of a stalled masterpiece into a courtroom, the proceedings attempt to definitively answer whether John…
Vassall Morton: A Novel
Francis Parkman
A man of promise returns from a long, living death in an Austrian prison to reclaim a life that his enemies hoped was permanently erased.
A Creature of the Night: An Italian Enigma
Fergus Hume
A nameless Englishman visiting Verona finds himself drawn into a lethal web of ancient poisons, haunted palaces, and a woman who moves through the darkness as if it were her own element.
A Diplomatic Woman
Huan Mee
A woman of wit and cold, calculated poise navigates the treacherous, shifting alliances of European high society to outmaneuver the most dangerous spies in Paris.
A Fleet in Being: Notes of Two Trips With The Channel Squadron
Rudyard Kipling
This account captures the mechanical grace and human resilience of the late-Victorian Royal Navy, portraying a fleet that is as much a living organism as a collection of steel.
A Gray Eye or So. In Three Volumes—Volume III
Frank Frankfort Moore
A secret marriage and a political scandal collide in a sharp, cynical portrait of aristocratic maneuvering. This narrative tracks the collision between romantic idealism and the cold calculations of high-society life in late 19th-century Britain.
A New Story Book for Children
Fanny Fern
This collection of vignettes and biographical sketches serves as a bridge between the intimate world of childhood and the broader, often turbulent landscape of the nineteenth century. It is a compassionate exploration of human character, resilience, and the quiet sanctity of home.
A Thousand Francs Reward
Emile Gaboriau
The mystery of a missing merchant gives way to a sprawling portrait of the French military, captured in the mid-nineteenth century.
A treatise on the esculent funguses of England: containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc
David Badham
HOOK This work serves as a practical, culinary, and scientific field guide designed to rescue the diverse, neglected mushrooms of England from a reputation of suspicion and dread.
A Wife's Duty: A Tale
Amelia Opie
A quiet study of marital devotion, this narrative explores the boundaries of forgiveness when a husband’s follies repeatedly threaten the stability of his home and the happiness of his wife.
An Arkansas Planter
Opie Percival Read
A stubborn patriarch struggles to preserve his traditional way of life against the encroaching forces of social change and the independent spirit of his headstrong daughter.
An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Volume 1
Alexander Hewatt
This historical chronicle traces the arduous, often violent, early development of the southern American colonies. It provides a foundational look at how colonial society struggled to organize itself against a backdrop of geographical isolation, political turbulence, and religious strife.
An Old Man's Darling
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A radiant young woman is trapped in a web of deceit and forced into a marriage with an older man, unaware that her true love is being kept at bay by those who covet her inheritance.
An Old Story of My Farming Days Vol. 3 (of 3).: (Ut Mine Stromtid)
Fritz Reuter
The final volume of this expansive rural chronicle brings the long-standing tensions of the Mecklenburg countryside to a head, resolving decades of social friction and personal heartache through the transformative power of human kindness.
An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe: : founded upon the laws of nature, and solving by mathematical principles the general phænomena of the visible creation
Thomas Wright
A bold eighteenth-century cosmologist looks into the night sky, looks past the solar system, and maps the architecture of the Milky Way as a rotating ring of distant suns.
'And So Ad Infinitum' (The Life of the Insects): An Entomological Review, in Three Acts, a Prologue and an Epilogue
Karel Čapek
This stinging, allegorical drama uses the frantic lives of insects to mirror the darkest impulses of human society, exposing our vanity, greed, and cycle of destructive conflict.
Andrew Golding: A Tale of the Great Plague
Anne E. Keeling
A young woman chronicles a harrowing journey through the heart of 1665 London, seeking a lost kinsman amidst the suffocating terror of the Great Plague.
Around the World on Wheels, for The Inter Ocean: The Travels and Adventures in Foreign Lands of Mr. and Mrs. H. Darwin McIlrath
H. Darwin McIlrath
This account documents an ambitious, multi-year cycling expedition that circled the globe in the final years of the nineteenth century. It serves as a candid, grit-filled record of a world transitioning into the modern age through the eyes of two American travelers.
Arthur Brown, The Young Captain
Elijah Kellogg
Gratitude and industry serve as the twin anchors of this maritime tale, where a young man’s brush with death leads him into the orbit of a veteran captain who once owed everything to the boy's own father.
Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist
John T. (John Thomas) McIntyre
A brilliant investigator navigates a web of deceit, jewel thieves, and family secrets to exonerate the wrongly accused in this intricate puzzle of Gilded Age crime.
Aucassin and Nicolete
Andrew Lang
This medieval song-story captures the eternal, fragile intersection of high romance and low comedy, told through a unique alternating structure of prose and verse that has enchanted readers for centuries.
Aunt Kitty's Stories
Various
Little Bo-peep and her wandering sheep share space with cautionary tales of children who play with fire, creating a collection that blends lighthearted nonsense with the stern moral lessons of a bygone era.
Bank of the Manhattan Company, Chartered 1799: A Progressive Commercial Bank
Anonymous
Born from a clever legislative loophole during a public health crisis, this institution evolved from a water utility into a cornerstone of American commercial finance.
Barometer and Weather Guide
Unknown
This practical handbook serves as a guide for understanding the language of the atmosphere, teaching readers how to interpret subtle shifts in pressure and sky to navigate the dangers of the open sea.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 01 of 10: the Custom of the Country
John Fletcher
A reckless, high-stakes drama explores the collision between individual honor and the rigid, often cruel, laws of a foreign land. A pair of brothers, caught in a cycle of passion and violence, must navigate a world where love is both a weapon and a ransom.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador
Norman Duncan
Billy Topsail is a rugged Newfoundland youth whose life is defined by the relentless sea and the harsh, icy wilderness. Through a series of perilous encounters, he finds his calling in the service of a remote medical outpost.
Billy Whiskers Out for Fun
Frances Trego Montgomery
Seeking a life beyond the drafty barn, an aging, restless goat sets off on a cross-country journey, dragging his loyal companions into a series of improbable and mischievous escapades.
Blackie & Son's Books for Young People, Catalogue - 1891
Blackie & Son
This 1891 catalogue provides a window into the Victorian literary imagination, revealing a vast, disciplined universe of adventure and moral instruction designed to shape the character of a young, burgeoning generation.
Blister Jones
John Taintor Foote
The track is a world unto itself, a place where the high stakes of the racing game are played out by men who live on the margins and horses that run on heart. These linked stories capture the grit, the humor, and the quiet dignity of a life lived in the stables and the betting rings.
Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Spring’s slow, deliberate arrival at a secluded New England home serves as a meditative lens, revealing the cyclical relationship between the natural world and the human spirit.
Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains
George Cary Eggleston
A determined group of city boys and their mentor face the harsh realities of the Appalachian wilderness, where they must outwit illicit distillers to secure their own survival and a hidden fortune.
Cape Breton Tales
Harry James Smith
A collection of quiet, poignant vignettes, these stories capture the rugged rhythm of life among the Acadian fishing villages of Cape Breton at the turn of the twentieth century.
Castle Blair: A Story of Youthful Days
Flora L. (Flora Louisa) Shaw
A group of spirited children in rural Ireland struggle against the harsh authority of a rigid estate agent, only to find their world transformed by a cousin who teaches them the power of grace.
Chants for Socialists
William Morris
A clarion call for social transformation, these poems envision a future where labor is joyful and the fruits of the earth are shared by all, urging readers to embrace the revolutionary struggle required to secure it.
Circus
Alan Edward Nourse
A weary traveler from the stars finds himself stranded in a world that mirrors his own, only to discover that the ultimate barrier to his return is his own utter normalcy.
Claimants to Royalty
John Henry Ingram
History is littered with the ghosts of dead princes who refused to stay buried. This catalog of impostors reveals how often the desperate, the ambitious, and the cunning have seized upon the names of fallen royalty to manipulate the world.
Coming Home: 1916
Edith Wharton
A haunting exploration of the moral gray zones born in the trenches, where the line between hero and executioner dissolves in the shadow of total war.
Cynthia Steps Out
Erick Berry
A young American artist travels alone through Europe, turning her talent for capturing life and her adventurous spirit into a series of serendipitous encounters.
Dick Onslow Among the Redskins
William Henry Giles Kingston
An adventurous young traveler journeys westward across North America, enduring harrowing encounters with bears, rattlesnakes, and hostile tribes, all while seeking a new life in the distant promise of California.