The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 581
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 581 of 714.

Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters
Grace Aguilar
A quiet house in Devonshire becomes the testing ground for every variety of childhood fault and maternal patience.

How to Get Married, Although a Woman
Irene W. Hartt
Practical strategy triumphs over romance in a Victorian manual that treats courtship as a coolly calculated campaign, urging women to keep their composure, manage male vanity, and secure a marriage proposal through self-control.

Idle Hours in a Library
William Henry Hudson
A literary scholar invites readers on four distinct excursions into the past, wandering through London’s vibrant streets, private diaries, early romantic fiction, and the fragile, impoverished attics of Parisian artists.

In the Days of Queen Elizabeth
Eva March Tappan
Elizabeth Tudor navigates royal deadly rivalries, imprisonment in the Tower, and the burdens of statecraft to forge a unified, prosperous England over half a century of rule.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris
A vast landscape of Middle Georgia opens up through a rich tapestry of animal fables, historical sketches, Reconstruction struggles, and swamp adventures. Across decades of storytelling, plantation traditions give way to a changing Southern society.

Jack in the Rockies: A Boy's Adventures with a Pack Train
George Bird Grinnell
An old hand leads two boys through a vanishing wilderness, where every mountain pass and campfire story opens another layer of the West.

John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising
Bertram Mitford
A British official in colonial Rhodesia faces a native uprising, personal betrayal, and a perilous journey to protect a woman he loves.

Kafir Stories: Seven Short Stories
W. C. (William Charles) Scully
Crossing cultural frontiers in late nineteenth-century South Africa, these seven tales lay bare the collisions of human greed, tribal custom, and imperial authority.

Kings Mountain National Military Park, South Carolina
George C. Mackenzie
In October 1780, an untrained army of Appalachian frontiersmen surrounded a heavily fortified ridge in South Carolina to confront a Loyalist force, altering the trajectory of the American Revolution in a single hour of violent combat.

"Laramie;" Or, The Queen of Bedlam. A Story of the Sioux War of 1876
Charles King
A young lieutenant’s silver money vanishes from his desk on a frontier army post, leaving a trail of silken rustles and missing keepsakes across the Cheyenne plains.

Leprosy
G. Armauer (Gerhard Armauer) Hansen
A landmark nineteenth-century clinical study replaces centuries of terror and folklore with precise microscopic observation, establishing leprosy as a specific, bacterial infection that demands rational public health measures rather than ancient superstitions.

Letters from the peninsula, 1808-1812
Warre, William, Sir
Underneath the official histories of Wellington’s campaigns lies a far more candid story of wet boots, frustrating allies, and the gritty day-to-day work of forging a functioning army.

Life on the Mississippi, Part 3
Mark Twain
A treacherous river shifts under every passing boat, demanding absolute mastery from the men who steer the great wooden steamers through its dark, labyrinthine currents.

Little Philippe of Belgium
Madeline Brandeis
A restless young boy on a quiet Belgian farm longs for a life of grand adventure, only to discover how treacherous the open road can be.

Mad Shepherds, and Other Human Studies
L. P. (Lawrence Pearsall) Jacks
A eccentric shepherd looks up at the English night sky, indifferent to the gossip of the village tavern because his mind is wandering through the rings of Saturn.

Married life
May Edginton
Expectations collide with hard realities when romantic ideals enter the grind of domestic life and financial strain.

Meeting of the Minds
Robert Sheckley
A long-dormant Martian entity stows away to Earth, seeking to unify all living creatures into a single hive mind—starting with an isolated island treasure-hunting expedition.

Monsieur Lecoq, v. 2
Emile Gaboriau
Driven by political fury, secret shame, and relentless jealousy, two noble families and an army of conspirators tear themselves apart in post-Napoleonic France.

Moral Tales
Madame (Elisabeth Charlotte Pauline) Guizot
Everyday domestic choices become the true crucible of character in this French collection, where childhood errors carry real weight and quiet integrity quietly prevails.

Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches
Ruth McEnery Stuart
A month after burying her husband, a plantation widow plans a remarriage while stubbornly guarding her full year of grief, setting off a collection of wry, tender tales.

My Escape from Donington Hall, Preceded by an Account of the Siege of Kiao-Chow in 1915
Gunther Plüschow
A solitary German aviator wages an aerial campaign over a besieged Chinese outpost, falls into British hands, and pulls off a daring escape through the heart of wartime London.

My Escape from Germany
Eric A. Keith
A stubborn civilian prisoner navigates false leads, wet woods, and cold cells to outwit his captors and slip across the border into Holland.

Nature and Art
Mrs. Inchbald
Two brothers choose radically different paths in eighteenth-century England—one climbing the ranks of social ambition through rigid conformity, the other raising a son in wild innocence far from worldly corruption.

Navy Day
Harry Harrison
Military grandstanding turns into a surreal bureaucratic arms race when technological breakthroughs redefine land and sea power overnight.

Neighbours on the Green
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
Quiet observers know that small towns keep big secrets. In this nineteenth-century Surrey enclave, gossipy warmth masks deep griefs, secret pasts, and quiet sacrifices.

Neva's three lovers: a novel
Harriet Lewis
A orphaned heiress navigating a labyrinth of forged letters, treacherous step-parents, and competing suitors must unearth the truth about her past to secure her future.

Next Door Neighbours: A Comedy
Mrs. Inchbald
Boundaries melt when a paper-thin wall is all that separates a realm of ruinous aristocratic luxury from a cold room where an impoverished family starves.

Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
A lively Victorian forum unfolds through brief dispatches, preserving a rich tapestry of literary debate, historical investigation, and regional folklore.

Notes on the History of Argentine Independence
Charles W. Whittemore
South America’s march toward freedom begins not in sudden ideological thunder, but in an expansive geographical reversal that turns a colonial commercial outpost into an invincible continental liberator.

Old Melbourne Memories: Second Edition, Revised
Rolf Boldrewood
Boundless open pastures, violent frontier skirmishes, and the heady thrill of building a colony from scratch animate this rich pastoral memoir. Rolf Boldrewood captures the untamed spirit of early Victoria through vivid, authentic recollections.

Personal Reminiscences in Book Making, and Some Short Stories
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
A writer who dives into cold seas to test a plot point will stop at nothing to capture the truth.

Pirate tales from the law
Arthur M. (Arthur Merton) Harris
Eighteenth-century pirates step out of romantic legend and into the harsh light of courtroom records, where sworn testimonies reveal their actual lives, petty squabbles, and eventual walk to the gallows.

Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II
Jean Ingelow
A quiet, luminous collection of Victorian verse, exploring faith, domestic intimacy, and the lingering shadow of loss.

Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914
Various
Dive into the wit and satire of *Punch* magazine, offering a unique perspective on early 20th-century life, politics, and culture.

Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 32, November 5, 1870
Various
This nineteenth-century American humor periodical delivers a sharp, theatrical snapshot of Reconstruction-era urban satire, blending parodies of popular literature with barbed commentary on Gilded Age society, politics, and press rivalries.

Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising
Annie Nathan Meyer
A devoted fourteenth-century reformer finds his spirit torn between the quiet purity of the sanctuary, the fiery demands of a peasant uprising, and the agonizing call of human desire.

Roman life in the days of Cicero
Alfred John Church
An eye for detail and a knack for human drama bring first-century Rome to life through the public speeches and private correspondence of its greatest orator.

Rosy
Mrs. Molesworth
A young girl’s fierce jealousy and explosive temper threaten to tear apart her quiet English home when a gentle orphaned cousin arrives to live with her family.

Sonnets and Canzonets
Amos Bronson Alcott
Through quiet verse and earnest portraits, a New England elder reflects on a long life shaped by love, philosophical friendship, and the American struggle for freedom.

Spiritual Adventures
Arthur Symons
A strange, quiet child watches his parents, learns he has no home to anchor him, and discovers that the only real life he possesses is the life going on inside his head.

Storm Warriors
John Gilmore
Men battle furious seas off the English coast to rescue strangers stranded upon shifting quicksands.

Taras Shevchenko, the poet of Ukraine
Taras Shevchenko
A bound nation’s agony and hunger for freedom find their enduring voice in the verses of a former serf turned poet.

That Stick
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
An unexpected inheritance lifts a modest, middle-aged clerk into the British peerage, forcing an unpretentious couple to navigate elevated social duties while protecting their young heir from envious family scheme.

The Air Ship Boys
H. L. (Harry Lincoln) Sayler
A teenage aeronaut builds a hydrogen-powered dirigible to unearth a ancient Aztec temple hidden high in the southwestern mountains.

The Autobiography of a Monkey
Albert Bigelow Paine
Born in the deep shadows of an African forest, a bright young monkey is tricked into leaving his native tree-tops, embarking on an extraordinary journey through human society before ultimately returning home as a fully civilized leader.

The Banner Boy Scouts
George A. Warren
An eager small-town teenager rallies his friends into a newly formed Boy Scout patrol, leading them through midnight practical jokes, lost-child hunts, and local rivalries to claim their county’s top banner.

The Barren Ground of Northern Canada
Warburton Pike
A journey beyond the tree line becomes a test of sheer physical endurance in the raw, unforgiving wilderness of northern Canada.

The Beggar Man
Ruby M. (Ruby Mildred) Ayres
She married a mysterious stranger to save her family from poverty, only to discover he might be the very man who ruined them.