The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 587
30,104 public-domain books, summarised. Page 587 of 628.
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.
The Young Surveyor
J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge
He has a transit instrument in his hand, a faithful black dog by his side, and a quiet determination to see every boundary line drawn true.
The Youth of the Great Elector
L. (Luise) Mühlbach
A young prince must navigate court intrigue, foreign exile, and deadly domestic treason to claim his rightful throne in war-torn seventeenth-century Germany.
Thirteen months in the Rebel Army : being a narrative of personal adventures in the infantry, ordnance, cavalry, courier, and hospital services
William G. Stevenson
Pressed into a hostile army by local vigilance committees, a young Northern traveler finds that survival requires becoming a soldier for the very cause he despises.
This World Is Taboo
Murray Leinster
Driven by unexamined fear, two isolated planetary colonies hover on the brink of mutual destruction until a traveling medical officer uses biology and basic human logic to dismantle their feud.
Thomas Carlyle
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A fiery Scottish thinker challenges the smug assumptions of nineteenth-century progress, insisting that history is driven by passionate spiritual power rather than mechanical systems or smooth political theories.
Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone or the Picture That Saved a Fortune
Victor Appleton
Young inventor Tom Swift sets out to build a telephone that transmits live images alongside sound, but his work is derailed when an unscrupulous financier targets his wealthy friend, leading to a high-tech pursuit across land and air.
Toying with fate
Nicholas (House name) Carter
A relentless detective pursues two tangled murder cases through the gaslit shadows, back alleys, and gilded parlors of turn-of-the-century Manhattan.
Useful Knowledge: Volume 3. Animals
William Bingley
Every creature on Earth offers something to human hands, whether for food, medicine, shelter, or trade.
Vaiti of the Islands
Beatrice Grimshaw
A daughter of the South Seas steers her father's schooner through storm and intrigue, matching wits with lawmen, cannibals, and rival traders in an untamed Pacific.
Vocations Explained: Matrimony, Virginity, the Religious State and the Priesthood
Dennis J. Downing
Discerning one's proper path in life requires deep reflection, spiritual clarity, and an understanding of divine calling across matrimony, virginity, the religious state, and the priesthood.
Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68
Charles King
Across the vast, sun-baked plains of 1860s Wyoming, a lone cavalry troop rides toward a brewing storm, caught between a treacherous Indian uprising and the shadow of quiet dishonor.
What I Remember, Volume 2
Thomas Adolphus Trollope
A bustling Victorian literary life unfolds across European stage-coaches and Florentine salons in this warm, wide-ranging memoir.
What to eat and when
Susanna Cocroft
Fueling the body requires more than whim or habit; it demands an understanding of cellular repair, metabolic chemistry, and the quiet harmony between physical vigor and a sound mind.
Why We Love Music
Carl E. (Carl Emil) Seashore
Understanding music requires peering behind the curtain of human emotion to examine the psychological drivers, physical acoustics, and biological traits that make sounds resonate so deeply.
Winter Adventures of Three Boys in the Great Lone Land
Egerton Ryerson Young
Boundless snows, crackling campfires, and the sharp bark of dog teams frame a northern winter built for hardy spirits and boundless curiosity.
Wireless Transmission of Photographs: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged 1919
Marcus J. Martin
Image-bearing radio signals bridges early twentieth-century photography, mechanical engineering, and electromagnetic physics into a singular, practical vision.
Witch of the Glens
Sally Watson
A wild Romany waif relies on lies and petty theft until Highland hospitality, clan feuds, and a cynical young soldier show her a different life.
A Rivermouth Romance
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A forty-year-old Irish cook marries a handsome, shiftless sailor half her age, plunging her orderly domestic life in a quiet New England town into a hilarious cycle of absurd missing-persons cases and endless marital endurance.
Adventures Among the Red Indians: Romantic Incidents and Perils Amongst the Indians of North and South America
Sidney Harry Wright
Bridging continents and centuries, these dramatic accounts detail encounters between intrepid travelers and the native peoples of the Americas.
Adventures of Hans Sterk: The South African Hunter and Pioneer
Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks) Drayson
A young Dutch hunter fights through fierce tribal wars, shipwreck, and the hazards of the African wild to forge a home on the frontier.
An English girl in Japan
Ella M. Hart Bennett
An affectionate curiosity and an appetite for misadventure carry a Victorian traveler through a rapidly changing Japan at the turn of the twentieth century.
An Epitome of the Homeopathic Healing Art: Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time
B. L. (Benjamin L.) Hill
When acute illness strikes the nineteenth-century household, healing begins not with radical intervention, but with precise, low-dose botanical tinctures and simple domestic care.
And It Comes Out Here
Lester Del Rey
A middle-aged traveler steps through his own front door to hand his younger self the key to an impossible future, launching a closed loop of discovery where cause and effect forever swap places.
Beautiful but poor
Julia Edwards
A poor working girl in late nineteenth-century New York guards a mysterious past while transforming every life she touches across a city of harsh boardinghouses and hidden fortunes.