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47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 677 of 988.

The Haunted Hangar: Sky Scouts/Air Mystery series #3
Van Powell
High-altitude intrigue, a missing fortune in matched Indian gems, and a mysterious "ghost" haunt the skies and coastlines of Long Island Sound in this classic 1930s aviation adventure.

The Jessamy Bride
Frank Frankfort Moore
An affectionate, fictionalized portrait of Oliver Goldsmith’s final years, this Eighteenth-Century period piece captures the vulnerability, humor, and tragic romantic longings of a literary genius who feels entirely out of place among his illustrious peers.

The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II.: With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters
Nelson, Horatio Nelson, Viscount
Duty and private devotion collide across sea and shore in a collection of wartime letters. Behind the grand triumphs of the Mediterranean fleet lies a messy, deeply human domestic reality.

The Man from Home
Booth Tarkington
The American lawyer, Daniel Voorhees Pike, arrives at a swanky Italian hotel to rescue his ward from a predatory European marriage. Beneath the wit of his blunt, small-town charm lies an unyielding resolve that forces a clash of cultures and class.

The Master of Aberfeldie, Volume 1 (of 3)
James Grant
A wealthy cousin’s return from military service in India sets off a chain of romantic rivalries, hidden schemes, and clash of wills inside a proud Scottish estate.

The Mexican War diary of George B. McClellan
George B. (George Brinton) McClellan
A young military engineer records the raw realities, tedious marches, and tactical friction of the U.S. invasion of Mexico. His blunt private journal strips away romantic notions of war to reveal the sharp divides within the American army.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 570, October 13, 1832
Various
Walking the paths of the Isle of Wight, standing on the stormy banks of the Rubicon, or traversing the panicked streets of Brussels after Waterloo, the observer of history finds that human nature remains entirely unchanged.

The moon
Thomas Gwyn Elger
The Moon invites the curious observer to look past the familiar glow of the night sky and engage in the rigorous, disciplined art of selenography.

The New Woman: An Original Comedy, in Four Acts
Sydney Grundy
An Oxford idealist marries a simple country girl, only to discover that intellect and marriage make volatile chemistry.

The noise of the world
Adriana Spadoni
This is a story of two people navigating the friction between their intimate hopes and the relentless demands of an industrializing, chaotic society. It is an honest, unsentimental portrait of a marriage finding its footing in a changing world.

The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28: A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers
Various
A varied collection of nineteenth-century rhymes, short dialogues, and brief instructional stories opens a gentle window into the domestic life, moral expectations, and imaginative play of young Victorian children.

The Ordeal: A Mountain Romance of Tennessee
Charles Egbert Craddock
The mountains of Tennessee hold secrets of grief, crime, and long-buried affection, forcing a mother to confront the limits of her own resolve. A lost child becomes the center of a quiet, desperate struggle against an unforgiving wilderness.

The presidential snapshot
Bertram Lebhar
A secret agent armed with a camera braves a turbulent South American republic to expose a dictatorial regime, rescue a falsely imprisoned president, and clear his own name.

The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands
Frank Honeywell
A summer cruise through the Thousand Islands turns into a high-stakes investigation when three boys intercept a frantic distress call on their amateur radio set.

The ranch of the tombstones
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Two cowboys investigate a mysterious ranch with a graveyard, uncovering secrets and facing danger.

The River of Life, and Other Stories
A. I. (Aleksandr Ivanovich) Kuprin
A young man in love with a forest healer must flee when the local villagers blame her for a catastrophic hail storm.

The Smiling Hill-Top, and other California sketches
Julia M. (Julia Moss) Sloane
California life, with its orange blossoms, rattling earthquakes, and the perennial, adventurous question of "Why not?", offers a fresh start for those weary of rigid East Coast conventions.

The southern cross
Foxhall Daingerfield
Across four acts set in Kentucky and Ohio during 1864, a Southern family's ancestral home turns into a union headquarters, a stage for clandestine military intelligence, and a place of tragic sacrifice.

The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This short piece invites us to observe the human condition from the quiet vantage point of a bridge toll-house, where the entire world seems to pass in a single, flickering day.

The West Indies: Being a Description of the Islands, Progress of Christianity, Education, and Liberty Among the Colored Population Generally
Nancy Prince
A free Black woman from New England travels to post-emancipation Jamaica to teach, only to encounter stormy seas, piratical threats, local corruption, and institutional exploitation of the newly freed population.

Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910: The Site of the Terminal Station. Paper No. 1157
George C. Clarke
This technical account documents the massive civil engineering feat required to clear the site for Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Terminal in the early 20th century. It is a precise, unsentimental record of industrial transformation.

Twinkle Toes and His Magic Mittens
Laura Rountree Smith
A dancing kitten, a magic pair of gloves, and a trio of classic storybook felines embark on a whimsical journey through cold winter woods.

Under Many Flags
Elsie Singmaster
A quiet courage drives these stories of men and women who leave everything familiar to feed, teach, build, and heal across the globe.

Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago
Henry William Herbert
This narrative captures a lost world of American field sports, where the rhythm of the seasons and the camaraderie of the hunt define the moral and physical landscape.

We Three
Gouverneur Morris
An idle man of privilege becomes tangled in a marriage that is already falling apart, only to discover that love without discipline destroys everyone involved.

When the Sun went out
Leslie F. (Leslie Francis) Stone
This story follows the final generation of humanity as they abandon the frozen surface of a dying Earth to seek refuge in subterranean vaults. It is a haunting, melancholic vision of a civilization facing its inevitable end.

Whispers at Dawn
Roy J. (Roy Judson) Snell
A boy steps across the threshold of a dark Chicago townhouse, only to find himself trapped in a hall of optical illusions, floating skeletons, and mysterious voices speaking down beams of light.

Will Somers, the Boy Detective
Charles Morris
A street-smart teenager cons his way into a Philadelphia dry-goods store, only to uncover a high-stakes warehouse theft ring that hits shockingly close to home.

Wise-crack dictionary
Unknown
A kaleidoscopic index of 1920s American vernacular, this collection captures the fleeting wit, cynicism, and social anxieties of a nation caught between the Great War and the Great Depression. It serves as a linguistic time capsule for a rapidly changing culture.

A Bad Day for Sales
Fritz Leiber
In the heart of a bustling, consumer-obsessed metropolis, a sophisticated vending robot navigates the expectations of a crowd, oblivious to the fact that his sales pitch is about to be interrupted by total annihilation.

A blighted life
Lytton, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness
A woman’s harrowing account of her forced commitment to an asylum, exposing the dangerous intersection of patriarchal power, legal inequality, and the Victorian impulse to silence dissent.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 8
Mark Twain
An ordinary man from nineteenth-century Connecticut wakes up in the sixth century, where he uses his modern ingenuity to overhaul the archaic structures of King Arthur’s court. Through a blend of sharp wit and mechanical prowess, he attempts to drag a medieval society into the light of the industrial age.

A Day of Fate
Edward Payson Roe
A burned-out city journalist finds unexpected salvation and a complicated romance after retreating to the quiet of a country farmhouse.

A handbook of library appliances: The technical equipment of libraries: fittings, furniture, charging systems, forms, recipes, etc
James Duff Brown
A practical guide for the Victorian administrator, this work details the physical and mechanical foundations required to build and maintain a functioning public library. It serves as an essential manual for those tasked with equipping a civic institution from the ground up.

A Journey in Russia in 1858
Robert Heywood
A Victorian traveler offers a sharp-eyed, candid account of his excursion to St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1858, capturing a Russia caught between imperial grandeur and the looming shadow of social change.

A Likely Story
William Dean Howells
A playful, lighthearted farce of manners, this brief work centers on a series of hilarious misunderstandings triggered by a misplaced love letter. Its enduring charm lies in its sharp, witty dialogue and its affectionate satire of the social pretenses of its era.

A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The sea, the child, and the song are the three pillars that hold up this vast, rhythmic exploration of the natural world and the human spirit. It is a work of deep, rolling music, capturing a mind at once reverent toward the masters of the past and fiercely defiant of the rigid hierarchies of its own day.

Across the Stream
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
This is a quiet, unsettling exploration of how grief and the unseen world intersect, written with a steady hand that favors psychological observation over easy answers. It traces the life of a sensitive young man who discovers, in the wake of personal loss, that he possesses an involuntary gift for spiritual…

American Lutheranism, Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General Council, United Synod in the South)
F. (Friedrich) Bente
This volume chronicles the historical evolution of the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod in the South, charting their shifting relationship with the historic Lutheran Confessions in an increasingly pluralistic American landscape.

An Essay on the Encroachments of the German Ocean Along the Norfolk Coast: With a Design to Arrest Its Further Depredations
William Hewitt
This work serves as a technical proposal and regional survey, documenting the relentless erosion of the Norfolk coastline by the North Sea. It combines maritime observation, geological detail, and a practical engineering plan intended to preserve land and human life from the encroaching tides.

An Historical Summary of the Post Office in Scotland
T. B. (Thomas Bamford) Lang
The evolution of Scottish correspondence mirrors the nation’s own transformation, tracing a path from the precarious transport of royal decrees to the rapid, industrialized network of the nineteenth century.

April Fools: A farce in one act for three male characters
W. F. Chapman
The victims of a elaborate prank find themselves entangled in a series of absurd misunderstandings, turning a quiet morning into a chaotic lesson on the dangers of taking letters at face value.

At the Emperor's Wish: A Tale of the New Japan
Oscar K. (Oscar King) Davis
This tale of loyalty and transition follows the intersecting lives of two families in a rapidly modernizing Japan, where the rigid hierarchies of the past collide with the singular, unifying purpose of a nation at war.

Atoms and electrons
J. W. N. (John William Navin) Sullivan
Modern science reveals that the solid world is a swarm of invisible activity. Matter is not a static block, but a complex, pulsating architecture of electrical charges.

Aunt Jane's Nieces out West
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
The world is a stage, and in a rapidly shifting California, the line between reality and artifice is as fragile as a chalk mark on a studio floor.

Ballades and Verses Vain
Andrew Lang
The poet captures the elusive spirit of the past through the rigid elegance of classical forms, turning the fleeting moments of life into enduring verse.

Bill's School and Mine: A Collection of Essays on Education
William S. (William Suddards) Franklin
A collection of essays advocating for a holistic education that balances academic learning with practical experience and character development.

Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, May 1905
Various
This collection of essays, stories, and social commentary serves as a snapshot of the American South in the early twentieth century. It blends regional identity with the rapid industrial shifts of the era.