The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 625
30,104 public-domain books, summarised. Page 625 of 628.
On With Torchy
Sewell Ford
A witty office boy navigates love, work, and mischief in early 20th-century New York.
Ormond
Charles Brockden Brown
An orphaned woman faces ruin, pestilence, and a seductive nihilist who believes his superior intellect exempts him from human morality.
Paul Gerrard, the Cabin Boy
William Henry Giles Kingston
Conscripted by family ruin, an English boy confronts ocean storms, hostile French gunners, mutinous shipmates, and the high-born rival who inherits his stolen legacy.
Perry's Saints
James Moses Nichols
A devoted Methodist minister leaves his pulpit to lead nine hundred recruits through four years of brutal coastal blockades, bloody assaults, and devastating attrition.
Popular British Ballads, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 2 (of 4)
Unknown
Anonymous traditional singers and broadside printers preserve centuries of British life, capturing a shared heritage of murder, romance, and spectral encounters.
Raw Material
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
A raw, unfiltered view of human existence reveals how ordinary lives hold the ultimate stuff of art.
Reminiscences of a student's life
Jane Ellen Harrison
A fierce, joyful appetite for knowledge powers this vivid memoir of an intellectual pioneer breaking free from Victorian constraints.
Rob of the Bowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe's. Vol. 1 (of 2)
John Pendleton Kennedy
Tensions rise in colonial Maryland as political rivalries, illicit trade, and local lore collide around the quiet settlement of St. Mary's.
Schenk's Theory: The Determination of Sex
Samuel Leopold Schenk
Control the maternal diet to alter metabolic combustion, and you can reliably dictate whether a child is born male.
Sea Warfare
Rudyard Kipling
Cold North Sea spray, rusted hulls, and the quiet, deadly routine of the men who keep the ocean lanes open form the heart of this portrait of naval endurance during the First World War.
Self-Denial
American Sunday-School Union
A group of schoolgirls form a society to save money for missionary work, learning self-denial and compassion.
Sophy of Kravonia: A Novel
Anthony Hope
An Essex servant girl rises through chance and magnetic fortune to become queen of a turbulent Balkan kingdom, only to lose everything except her invincible spirit in the flames of revolution.
Stories by American Authors, Volume 6
Various
A young man returns from state prison to his coastal town, determined to repay his debt, set his life right, and overcome the quiet suspicion of his neighbors.
Study and Stimulants
Unknown
A massive crowd of Victorian intellectuals steps forward to answer one urgent question: do tobacco and alcohol fuel the working brain, or do they poison it?
The April Baby's Book of Tunes: with the story of how they came to be written
Elizabeth Von Arnim
Confined indoors by a relentless snowstorm, three little sisters and their mother banish boredom by turning classic nursery rhymes into original musical tunes.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A vivid mid-nineteenth-century tapestry of high philosophy, intimate domestic drama, harrowing military memoirs, and bold civic reporting captures a rapidly evolving antebellum landscape.
The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience): A Translation of Parts into Modern English
Michel, Dan, active 14th century
An exacting Middle English guide maps human frailty to apocalyptic beasts, offering a rigorous blueprint for cleansing the soul before judgment arrives.
The Borough Treasurer
J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
A web of blackmail, murder, and secrets unravels in a small town, testing loyalties and revealing dark pasts.
The Boy Slaves
Mayne Reid
Lost on the unforgiving coast of North Africa after a shipwreck, three young midshipmen and a veteran British tar face capture, starvation, and grueling servitude under rival desert factions.
The Camel and the Needle's Eye
Ponsonby, Arthur Ponsonby, Baron
The accumulation of unearned riches acts as an artificial dam on human society, suffocating the spirit of the wealthy while starving the poor.
The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science
John W. (John Wesley) Judd
A magnificent revolution in human thought transformed our understanding of the natural world, replacing static creation theories with dynamic processes of gradual change and continuous modification over vast spans of geological time.
The daughter of the dawn
William Reginald Hodder
A lost English heiress, a dream-haunted searcher, and a ancient cavern sanctuary converge in the remote wilderness of turn-of-the-century New Zealand.
The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated, Hell, Volume 06
Dante Alighieri
A living traveler and his ancient guide descend through the terrifying, highly structured circles of the abyss, witnessing the precise retributions dealt to human sin.
The Etchings of Charles Meryon
Campbell Dodgson
A tragic, visionary spirit casts his dark optical genius over the stone portals, winding streets, and soaring gothic monuments of a doomed, rapidly transforming nineteenth-century city.
The four Corners in camp
Amy Ella Blanchard
A warm breeze from the Maine woods, the dip of light paddles, and the buoyant clutter of four sisters growing up together define this affectionate turn-of-the-century story of family and youth.
The Gamekeeper at Home: Sketches of Natural History and Rural Life
Richard Jefferies
In the quiet coombes and shaded ash woods of nineteenth-century England, a veteran gamekeeper walks his daily rounds, observing the intricate balance between human stewardship and wild nature.
The Girl Next Door
Augusta Huiell Seaman
A shadowed window across a city garden, a secretive girl forced to run errands alone, and two locked silver bracelets: a quiet New York street yields a haunting mystery.
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886
Various
An October afternoon in Victorian Britain unfolds across a countryside brook, where hidden life thrives beneath the water while human drama plays out quietly along its shores.
The Girls of St. Olave's
Mabel Mackintosh
Human self-centeredness gives way under the weight of sudden loss and quiet spiritual calling in a domestic world where every choice reshapes a family's soul.
The High Toby: Being further chapters in the life and fortunes of Dick Ryder, otherwise Galloping Dick, sometime gentleman of the road
H. B. Marriott (Henry Brereton Marriott) Watson
The dark is his element, the saddle his home, and any traveller with a heavy purse his natural prey.
The Hypocrite
Guy Thorne
A cynical student uses charm and deceit to exploit his peers, pursuing cheap thrills in London before meeting a bleak end.
The Lost Dahlia
Mary Russell Mitford
A woman's quest to find her lost dahlia leads her on a journey through picturesque landscapes and unexpected discoveries.
The Love Affairs of Pixie
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
A spirited young Irish woman discovers that a plain face and an uncertain engagement cannot keep her from finding a true, unexpected love.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 564, September 1, 1832
Various
A lively panoramic window into 1832, this periodical issue captures a society balancing architectural pride, scientific curiosity, and the cultural shifts of early industrial Britain.
The Mysterious Box: Nuclear Science and Art
Bernard Keisch
When three boys stumble upon a sun-bleached, wooden crate buried in the surf, they uncover a forgotten trove of wartime art and launch a fascinating journey into the high-tech world of nuclear authentication.
The Night Operator
Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
A high-octane collection of mountain railroading tales, where raw courage, sudden tragedy, and deep professional loyalty collide on the perilous tracks of the Canadian Rockies.
The Opinions of a Philosopher
Robert Grant
At forty, a man may fancy himself a serene spectator of life, only to find that raising children, buying houses, and entering politics will upend every quiet pretense.
The Origin of the Red Cross: "Un souvenir de Solferino"
Henry Dunant
A single day of unimaginable slaughter in the hills of northern Italy becomes the catalyst for a global movement of mercy.
The Pacha of Many Tales
Frederick Marryat
A bored Ottoman ruler and his scheming vizier demand endless yarns from travellers, captives, and rogues, trading lives and gold for high-spirited lies.
The Pacha of Many Tales
Frederick Marryat
A powerful governor seeks distraction from the perilous insecurity of his office, unwittingly opening his court to a endless procession of yarns, tall tales, and nested histories.
The Players
Everett B. Cole
A bored elite turns a primitive world into a board game, until two local recruits in a galactic peace corps decide to dismantle the board.
The Price of Coal: A Play
Harold Brighouse
In a small Lanarkshire cottage, a quiet household faces the sudden shock of a mine disaster. Behind closed doors, old premonitions and young love collide under the heavy weight of pit-side life.
The Princess De Montpensier
Madame de (Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne) La Fayette
A young noblewoman is traded into a loveless marriage, trapped between a ruthless suitor's ambition and the quiet devotion of an elder friend.
The romance of the Canadian Pacific Railway
R. G. (Roderick George) MacBeth
A country's survival hinges on a line of steel cut through raw wilderness, built by men whose vision outpaced their era's bitter doubts.
The Rover Boys in New York
Edward Stratemeyer
College students racing through the skies in a homemade biplane find themselves dragged into a shadowy world of corporate swindlers, staged jailbreaks, and missing fathers.
The Story of a Lover
Hutchins Hapgood
A man’s decades-long search for a total, transcendent connection with his wife tests the absolute limits of love, jealousy, and spiritual devotion in marriage.
The Story of the Little Mamsell
Charlotte Niese
A Danish servant's tale of the French Revolution, love, and sacrifice.
The Temptress
William Le Queux
A glamorous web of crime, extortion, and secret identities spans the continent as a charismatic femme fatale ensnares an innocent Englishman into her deadly, intricate schemes.