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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 656 of 711.

Scenes and Portraits
Frederic Manning
This collection of imaginative dialogues bridges the chasm between ancient myth and modern skepticism, inviting readers to witness history’s great minds debating the nature of belief. It is a contemplative meditation on how humanity grapples with the silence of the divine.

Scenic Mount Lowe and Its Wonderful Railway
George Wharton James
This guide serves as both a historical record and a promotional portrait of the legendary mountain railway that once connected the San Gabriel Valley to the heights of the Sierra Madre. It captures an era when technological ambition and the romantic appreciation of nature converged to make California’s peaks…

Shuddering castle
Wilbur Finley Fauley
A wealthy family’s secluded Long Island estate becomes the unlikely epicenter for a bizarre collision between radio-age ambition, intergalactic mystery, and a frightening, uninvited guest.

Signal in the Dark
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
A resourceful young reporter hunts for the truth behind a suspicious invention and a series of waterfront crimes. She risks her safety to expose the corrupt forces threatening her father’s newspaper and the industrial peace of her city.

Smoke Bellew
Jack London
HOOK A pampered city editor is thrust into the brutal, frozen wilderness of the Yukon, where he discards his former self to become a legendary frontiersman known only as Smoke.

Stories of New Jersey
Frank R. Stockton
A tapestry of local legend and national milestone, this collection gathers the figures and turning points that transformed a wilderness into a cornerstone of American history. It captures the spirit of a state shaped by both quiet resolve and grand ambition.

Subject to Vanity
Margaret Benson
HOOK This collection of sketches observes the private lives of household creatures, finding in their small joys and tragedies a reflection of the human condition.

Tenterhooks
Ada Leverson
A comedy of manners set in the rarified air of London’s social elite, where the delicate, unspoken boundaries of marriage and friendship are navigated with sharp, ironic precision.

The Album Writer's Friend: Comprising More Than Three Hundred Choice Selections of Poetry and Prose, Suitable for Writing in Autograph Albums, Valentines, Birthday, Christmas and New Year Cards
Unknown
An invitation to leave a lasting mark, this collection offers a treasury of verse and prose designed to bridge the distance between friends, one autograph at a time.

The Ascent of Man
Mathilde Blind
This ambitious work of poetry traces the epic trajectory of human progress, moving from the primal struggle for survival toward a vision of collective enlightenment and the refinement of the soul.

The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Book 21: Psalms: The Challoner Revision
Unknown
The Book of Psalms serves as an enduring repository of human emotion, mapping the vast landscape between profound isolation and spiritual ecstasy. It remains a foundational text for its raw, unflinching articulation of the human condition.

The Camp Fire Girls on a Yacht
Margaret Love Sanderson
A summer yachting adventure brings together a spirited group of young women, a secret aristocrat, and a series of dramatic rescues along the Atlantic coast.

The case of Oscar Slater
Arthur Conan Doyle
A meticulous, impassioned critique of a high-stakes Scottish murder trial, arguing that a flawed conviction was secured through systemic prejudice and unreliable eyewitness testimony.

The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880
Various
This periodical from 1880 mounts a vigorous, combative defense of Christianity, using common-sense reasoning and biblical exegesis to challenge both scientific skepticism and prevailing theological traditions.

The Chronic Loafer
Nelson Lloyd
The front porch of a country store serves as the stage for a group of men whose lives are measured by the slow passing of seasons and the infinite variety of local gossip. This collection of stories captures the rhythmic, unhurried cadence of a rural Pennsylvania valley, where a simple bench becomes the center of a…

The claims of decorative art
Walter Crane
Art thrives only when it breathes the same air as the life that surrounds it, yet modern industry has severed the connection between the beauty of the object and the soul of the laborer. This collection of essays serves as a manifesto for the dignity of the craftsman, arguing that when art becomes a mere commodity…

The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer
Charles Lever
The life of a young officer is a dizzying succession of near-misses, romantic blunders, and narrow escapes. This picaresque narrative captures the frantic, often self-inflicted chaos of a man forever one step away from disaster.

The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A collection of tales that peer into the quiet, often darker corners of English life, where blackmail, supernatural obsession, and the thin line between reality and invention collide.

The Duchess of Trajetto
Anne Manning
The life of a sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman serves as the backdrop for this historical narrative, which explores the tension between worldly aristocratic duty and the quiet, dangerous pursuit of spiritual truth during the Reformation.

The End of a Coil
Susan Warner
A young woman finds her devotion to faith tested by her father’s unraveling life, discovering that true strength lies in quiet endurance and moral courage.

The Fire-Gods: A Tale of the Congo
Charles Gilson
Three explorers venture into the heart of the Congo to confront the mysterious "Fire-gods," only to discover that the greatest threats in the jungle are not spirits, but the greed of man.

The Flower of the Flock, Volume 1 (of 3)
Pierce Egan
The sun illuminates both the gilded monuments of London and the desperate, soot-stained garrets of the poor. Amidst this bustling city, the lives of the proud, the desperate, and the devoted collide in a tangled web of inheritance and longing.

The Frontier Boys in the Sierras
Wyn Roosevelt
The Frontier Boys in the Sierras follows a band of resourceful brothers and their companions as they navigate the perils of the Pacific and the rugged California mountains in pursuit of a legendary lost gold mine.

The Gist of Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg
The Divine is not a distant abstraction but a present, accessible reality, revealed through a lifetime of labor dedicated to mapping the unseen landscape of the soul and its eternal progression.

The Great Taxicab Robbery: A True Detective Story
James H. (James Hiram) Collins
In the heart of a bustling, modernizing New York, a brazen daylight robbery of a taxicab leaves the city in a panic and the police under fire. This true account follows the methodical, often psychological, hunt to reclaim $25,000 and restore public faith in the law.

The hate disease
Murray Leinster
When a routine planetary checkup turns into a fight for survival, a lone medical officer must diagnose a society succumbing to a terrifying, artificial plague of hatred.

The Haunted Ship
Kate Marion Tucker
HOOK A group of children vacationing on the Maine coast stumbles upon a mysterious, grounded schooner, only to discover that the "ghost ship" is hiding very real, very dangerous secrets.

The heathery
Andrews, Henry Cranke, active 1799-1828
This botanical survey documents the breathtaking diversity of the *Erica* genus, capturing the delicate morphology of heaths from the Cape of Good Hope with scientific rigor and an artist’s eye.

The land of gold
Hinton Rowan Helper
This 1855 account offers a stark, disillusioned corrective to the era’s "Golden State" mythology, detailing a landscape defined more by systemic corruption, environmental hazards, and social decay than by promised wealth.

The Little Gray Lady: 1909
Francis Hopkinson Smith
The Little Gray Lady is a delicate, atmospheric study of a woman who has spent twenty years mourning a lost love, only to find the past unexpectedly brought to life by the village youth. It is a quiet, sentimental exploration of memory and the redemptive power of a truth spoken in time.

The Lone Wolf Returns
Louis Joseph Vance
A man who has finally traded his life as a notorious jewel thief for the peace of domestic love finds his past forcibly exhumed by a blackmailing criminal syndicate.

The Man of Taste
James Bramston
This poem is a sharp, satirical monologue that skewers the self-important affectations of the 18th-century social climber. It serves as a mock-autobiographical confession from a man who believes his expensive, shallow whims define true cultural sophistication.

The Marriages
Henry James
Adela Chart, a fiercely devoted daughter, takes it upon herself to protect her late mother’s legacy from her father’s impending remarriage. Her desperate interference sparks a complex chain of family secrets, personal betrayals, and unexpected consequences.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 03: Military Career
Giacomo Casanova
A young man casts off his clerical robes to reinvent himself as a dashing officer, trading the constraints of the church for the unpredictable, often perilous, and relentlessly romantic landscapes of eighteenth-century Europe.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 391, September 26, 1829
Various
This Victorian-era miscellany captures the restless curiosity of 1829, blending mechanical ingenuity, antiquarian wonder, and the polite social commentary of a rapidly industrializing England.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of 1832, blending curiosities of natural history, antiquarian lore, and literary critique into a vibrant mosaic of the early Victorian cultural imagination.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 578, December 1, 1832
Various
This nineteenth-century miscellany offers an eclectic window into the Georgian and Victorian mind, blending architectural history, medical theory, and the dry wit of London’s literary circles into a single, cohesive volume.

The monkey that would not kill
Henry Drummond
This small volume collects two loosely connected tales about an irrepressible, indestructible creature that defies every attempt to end its life, eventually finding its way into the homes and hearts of those who tried hardest to be rid of it.

The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories
Charles Egbert Craddock
A haunting, atmospheric portrait of life in the Cumberland Mountains, these tales capture the intersection of jagged landscapes and the complex, often isolated hearts of those who dwell among them.

The Nest Egg: Captains All, Book 3
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
This is a tale of sailors, schemes, and the unintended consequences of trying to outsmart one's own life. It turns a sharp, observant eye on the small-stakes dramas of the London docks, where a single clever plan can unravel everything.

The New York Tombs Inside and Out!: Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison
John Josiah Munro
This account pulls back the iron curtain of early twentieth-century New York, exposing a world of systemic corruption, prisoner gambling, and the stark intersection of human failing with municipal greed.

The Nine-Tenths
James Oppenheim
A wealthy printer’s life is shattered by a catastrophic factory fire, leading him to abandon his business to fight for the rights of the city’s most vulnerable laborers. This is a story of personal transformation and the high cost of social justice.

The peaceful atom
Bernice Kohn Hunt
The invisible building blocks of everything around us hold secrets that, once unlocked, promise to transform the future of humanity. Discover how the smallest particles in the universe became our greatest source of potential power.

The Pink Shop
Fergus Hume
A young woman’s quest for justice following her mother’s murder leads her into a labyrinth of secrets involving her wealthy father, a mysterious shop, and a determined investigator.

The Poisoned Pen
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A scientific investigator navigates the grit of early twentieth-century New York, using cutting-edge chemistry and emerging technology to solve mysteries that baffle the police.

The Punishment of Children
Felix Adler
Parenting is often a reactionary endeavor, driven by impulse and inherited habits. This guide seeks to replace such reflexive actions with intentionality, arguing that the way a parent corrects a child is the ultimate test of the parent’s own moral character.

The Re-echo Club
Carolyn Wells
A witty collection of literary parodies, this book imagines famous poets reimagining the same trivial subjects, from a purple cow to a Cubist painting, with hilarious and often biting results.

The Return of Tharn
Howard Browne
A prehistoric warrior traverses a perilous landscape of jungles and cities to rescue his captured beloved. He finds himself caught in a complex web of political betrayal involving a powerful king and a scheming nobleman.