The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 586
32,123 public-domain books, summarised. Page 586 of 670.
Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs.: With Laughable Colored Engravings
Unknown
An adventurous mouse and a succession of fashion-conscious pigs learn through bitter experience that ignoring maternal wisdom and leaving home leads directly to disaster.
Tell Me a Story
Mrs. Molesworth
Children need to hear that their ordinary feelings matter, and that even the small choices they make in the shadow of everyday life have real weight.
The art of angling
Barker, Thomas, active 1651
Mastering the running stream requires patience, fine tackle, and an understanding of the sun's angle. This seventeenth-century guide presents a complete blueprint for tricking river fish and turning the morning's catch into a feast.
The Blue Germ
Maurice Nicoll
A secret medical experiment promises humanity total freedom from disease and death, only to reveal that physical immortality strips life of passion, releases terrible societal hatreds, and brings civilization to a sudden, silent standstill.
The Boys of 1812 and Other Naval Heroes
James Russell Soley
Iron, salt spray, and wood smoke fill the air in a chronicle of early American seamanship, tracing how a young nation forged its place upon the ocean.
The Bride of Dreams
Frederik van Eeden
In a quiet Dutch town, an aging man looks back across a lifetime torn between high spiritual longings and the wild, instinctual forces of human desire.
The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1915
Arthur Conan Doyle
An avalanche of high explosives, poison gas, and mud descends upon the British Army along the Western Front in 1915, transforming warfare into a devastating test of sheer human endurance.
The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest
John Henry Goldfrap
A leap from a slippery river rock into the dark, a trapped party facing a sealed cave with four ounces of explosive, and a ring of sea-going outlaws on the Pacific coast make this a fast-moving adventure of rescue, capture, and survival.
The Carlovingian Coins
Eugène Sue
A vast, bloody empire meets the quiet resilience of a Breton farm.
The chocolate-plant (Theobroma cacao) and its products
Anonymous
A single tropical seed traveled from ancient American hearths to modern European dining rooms, transforming from a bitter ritual broth into an essential global commodity.
The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path
Donald Ferguson
A gang of high school boys navigates local rivalries, mysterious nocturnal encounters near an abandoned quarry, and the rigorous demands of cross-country running as they prepare for a high-stakes county athletic tournament.
The Curiosities and Law of Wills
John Proffatt
Behind the dry mechanics of estate planning lies a long history of human eccentricities, spiritual anxieties, and judicial hair-splitting over final wishes.
The Curse of Kehama, Volume 1 (of 2)
Robert Southey
A tyrannical king gains absolute power over heaven and earth, but his total victory is derailed when his terrible curse gives a grieving victim the unique power to defy him.
The development of British landscape painting in water-colours
A. J. (Alexander Joseph) Finberg
Across two centuries of changing tastes and techniques, British artists turned liquid pigment and light paper into an enduring, expressive vision of the natural world.
The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Purgatory, Volume 2
Dante Alighieri
A living traveler mounts a steep, sacred slope where suffering transforms the human soul through discipline, memory, and grace.
The Dull Miss Archinard
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A quiet life of quiet duty gives way to a tangled web of duty and devotion. When love arrives unbidden, self-sacrifice becomes a dark corner from which only absolute honesty can rescue the soul.
The economic position of women
Academy of Political Science in the City of New York
Stripped of industrial machinery, home life separates from factory labor, forcing women to navigate low wages, physical exhaustion, and systemic inequality.
The English Husbandman (The Second Booke)
Gervase Markham
Every soil holds a secret capacity for profit if managed with keen observation, seasonal discipline, and steady human labor.
The Father and Daughter: A Tale, in Prose
Amelia Opie
Driven by a lover's false promises, a young woman abandons her home, only to learn that her desertion has shattered her father’s mind and exposed her child to absolute isolation.
The "Goldfish": Being the Confessions af a Successful Man
Arthur Cheney Train
Wealth isolates its owners behind a glass barrier, creating an illusion of life while severing genuine human connection.
The history of the condition of women, in various ages and nations (vol. 2 of 2)
Lydia Maria Child
Across centuries and continents, the legal, spiritual, and social status of women has shifted between reverence, severe subjugation, and gradual emancipation.
The House of Baltazar
William John Locke
A brilliant, headstrong scholar leaves everything behind, only to find that the world he abandoned refuses to remain forgotten.
The Kiltartan Poetry Book
Lady Gregory
A quiet revolution slumbers in these pages, where ancient Irish sagas, local laments, and country folk-songs find a shared, luminous voice.
The Last Million: How They Invaded France—and England
Ian Hay
An affectionate slice-of-life tribute to the American Expeditionary Forces, this narrative traces green recruits from Atlantic transport decks through wartime Britain and France straight to the ecstatic silence of the Armistice.
The Last of Their Race
Annie S. Swan
The Last of Their Race captures the quiet dignity of a declining Scottish dynasty as two siblings confront the end of their ancestral home.
The Man In The High-Water Boots
Francis Hopkinson Smith
With broad-shouldered vigor and a reckless open-top motor ride through Normandy, a group of friends seeks out an outdoor painter who literally stands chest-deep in running water to capture the landscape.
The Mentor: Venice, the Island City, Vol. 1, Num. 27, Serial No. 27
Dwight L. (Dwight Lathrop) Elmendorf
A sunken cluster of mudflats rises into an enchanted marble metropolis, where silent stone thoroughfares yield entirely to liquid highways.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 13, No. 353, January 24, 1829
Various
A lively miscellany captures the architectural, literary, and social curiousness of Regency-era Britain. This 1829 periodical paints a sharp, entertaining portrait of everyday life, romantic poetry, and quirky cultural history.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 401, November 28, 1829
Various
A cheap penny weekly from late Georgian London opens a window onto a world obsessed with weird anatomy, Imperial expansion, and the quirky habits of statesmen.
The Nature Faker
Richard Harding Davis
A wealthy idealist buys three vaudeville bears to liberate them on his estate, only to discover that wild nature cannot easily undo a lifetime of show business.
The Net
Rex Beach
A cowardly act in a sunlit Italian garden sets off an international hunt for revenge that ends in the bloody streets of nineteenth-century New Orleans.
The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII.: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
Various
In high-summer fields and along bustling docks, children construct sand-castles, learn hard lessons about obedience, and marvel at tame bear cubs.
The O'Ruddy: A Romance
Stephen Crane
An impoverished Irish gentleman inherits a bundle of mysterious papers, travels to England to claim his fortune, and fights his way through duels, comedy, and high-society intrigue to win the woman he loves.
The Old Homestead
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A little girl shivering on a New England doorstep sets in motion a decades-long chronicle of secret lineages, lost inheritances, and quiet moral strength.
The Orchid Album, Volume 2: Comprising Coloured Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, and Beautiful Orchidaceous Plants
Thomas Moore
Intricate magenta-tipped petals, pendulous emerald blooms, and dark brown ruffs unfold in an elegant study of nature's rarest botanical treasures.
The Pavement Masters of Siena (1369-1562)
Robert H. Hobart (Robert Henry Hobart) Cust
The Cathedral of Siena holds a floor like no other, a vast tapestry of stone where the history of faith and philosophy is walked upon by the faithful. Through centuries of craft, this singular pavement records the evolving vision of the masters who laid it.
The Pearl of Lima: A Story of True Love
Jules Verne
In mid-nineteenth-century Peru, an Indian warrior and a young Jewish heiress attempt to cross the sharp lines of race and class that divide a nation on the brink of revolt.
The poems of Mary Howitt
Mary (Mary Botham) Howitt
Simple, rhythmic verse turns daily home life, natural wonders, and deep Christian charity into accessible moral stories for young and old alike.
The Prophecy of Merlin, and Other Poems
John Reade
Ancient prophecy, classical tragedy, and Victorian nation-building meet in a verse collection that spans from King Arthur's Avalon to nineteenth-century Canada.
The Purchase Price
Emerson Hough
A woman of international intrigue is taken captive by a southern slaveholder on the eve of the Civil War, igniting a fiery clash between their clashing loyalties and an unyielding mutual attraction.
The Queen's Reign and Its Commemoration: A literary and pictorial review of the period
Walter Besant
Sixty years of quiet, profound social evolution can alter a nation more thoroughly than the violent upheavals of a sudden revolution.
The Sign of the Red Cross: A Tale of Old London
Evelyn Everett-Green
A prosperous builder’s family and their devout neighbours endure the back-to-back catastrophes of 1665 and 1666, discovering through pestilence and fire what kind of timber their souls are made of.
The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption
James Branch Cabell
A legendary hero leaves behind a void that his followers fill not with truth, but with convenient, comforting myths of his return.
The Skating Party and Other Stories
Unknown
A simple walk past a frozen river opens up a tapestry of everyday Victorian childhood, where fragile joy and constant danger walk hand in hand.
The truth about opium
William H. Brereton
A polemical defense of the 19th-century opium trade argues that British commerce is unjustly maligned by misguided reformers and exaggerated moral panic.
The Universal Reciter: 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems
Various
Whether facing down a battle, a burning volcano, or a stubborn plate of French food, these eighty-one dramatic recitations capture nineteenth-century public performance in all its high-flown, tragic, and absurd glory.
The Utah Batteries: A History: A complete account of the muster-in, sea voyage, battles, skirmishes and barrack life of the Utah batteries, together with biographies of officers and muster-out rolls
Charles Rendell Mabey
Citizen soldiers trade the quiet towns of the American West for the heat and danger of a Pacific campaign. Written by a veteran sergeant, this account captures the reality of artillerymen fighting far from home.
The Wise Mamma Goose
Charlotte B. (Charlotte Bronte) Herr
When a nocturnal predator begins preying on a farmyard, an unassuming mother goose steps up to protect her brood, uncovering a clever strategy that ultimately saves all the barnyard creatures.