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47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 684 of 988.

Aboriginal American Authors
Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton
This bibliographical study illuminates the sophisticated literary traditions of indigenous American peoples, challenging historical misconceptions about the intellectual capacity of native cultures. It serves as a foundational argument for recognizing these works as a vital part of global literature.

About Peggy Saville
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
The lively, perceptive new girl at a country vicarage discovers that the true measure of character lies not in quick-witted arrogance, but in the difficult, unglamorous work of caring for others.

Adrift on an Ice-Pan
Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, Sir
A dedicated physician becomes stranded on a drifting ice pan off the coast of Labrador, forcing him to rely on his own ingenuity and the courage of others to survive a freezing, solitary ordeal.

Afterglow
Julia C. R. (Julia Caroline Ripley) Dorr
This collection of late-career poetry finds the beauty in the sunset of life, exploring the tension between earthly attachments and the quiet inevitability of the encroaching dark.

Airplane Boys at Platinum River
E. J. (Edith Janice) Craine
In the high Andes, two daring aviators become entangled in a desperate hunt for hidden treasure, pitting their piloting skills against a ruthless gang of criminals to save an innocent family.

An Introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians
H. C. (Harry Crécy) Yarrow
The final rites of the North American Indigenous peoples reveal a profound philosophy, documenting how diverse cultures honor the dead and conceive of the human spirit’s journey beyond this life. This inquiry serves as a foundational catalog of those sacred traditions.

An Open Letter to the Right Honorable David Lloyd George: Prime Minister of Great Britain
Lala Lajpat Rai
A poignant plea for liberty, this open letter exposes the staggering contrast between Britain’s stated democratic ideals and its colonial reality in India. It serves as a fervent argument for national self-determination.

Andrew Golding: A Tale of the Great Plague
Anne E. Keeling
A young woman chronicles a harrowing journey through the heart of 1665 London, seeking a lost kinsman amidst the suffocating terror of the Great Plague.

Anthropology
Franz Boas
This concise foundational text maps the vast, evolving terrain of the study of humanity, urging readers to look past their own cultural biases to understand the shared biological and psychological roots of all societies.

Astrology in medicine
Charles Arthur Mercier
Astrological systems once provided a complete, celestial framework for understanding human illness, shaping medical practice for thousands of years. This inquiry recovers that lost logic, revealing how ancient practitioners mapped the heavens onto the human body.

At Bay
Mrs. Alexander
A man of experience finds his cynical world-weariness challenged when he encounters a young woman haunted by a dark, mysterious past. He must navigate a web of secrets and dangerous men to protect her.

Azalea: The Story of a Little Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Elia Wilkinson Peattie
A young girl abandoned by a traveling show troupe finds sanctuary with a mountain family, only to face a difficult choice between her humble, loving new home and a future of wealth and opportunity.

Bread Overhead
Fritz Leiber
When a corporate blunder replaces carbon dioxide with hydrogen gas in an ultra-processed bread mix, billions of loaves rise into the air and drift across the globe, sparking an international crisis and an unexpected wave of world peace.

Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties and Epigrams
J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
This collection gathers the whimsical and the biting, offering a glimpse into a young writer’s mind as he navigates the intersection of mythology, social satire, and literary parody. It is a sharp, playful assembly of wit from the early twentieth century.

California and the Californians
David Starr Jordan
California offers an unparalleled landscape of rugged beauty and mild weather, yet its true character is defined by the fierce, individualistic spirit of those who make it their home.

Captain Sparkle, Pirate
Nicholas (House name) Carter
The modern world feels small to the wealthy, until a masked corsair appears in Long Island Sound to plunder their yachts and vanish into the night.

Catalogue of Practical and Scientific Books
Henry Carey Baird & Co.
This comprehensive inventory of technical knowledge serves as a portal into the Victorian era’s industrial soul, documenting the precise methods used to build, manufacture, and master the physical world.

Confessions of a Tradesman
Frank Thomas Bullen
The struggle of the small, independent shopkeeper is a quiet war of attrition against debt, exhaustion, and the indifference of a changing economy.

Dairying exemplified, or, The business of cheese-making: Laid down from approved rules, collected from the most experienced dairy-women, of several counties. Digested under various heads. From a series of observations, during thirty years practice in the cheese trade. The second edition corrected and improved
J. (Josiah) Twamley
This guide offers a methodical approach to the craft of cheese-making, grounded in thirty years of trade experience and the accumulated wisdom of eighteenth-century dairy-women. It serves as both a technical manual and a practical corrective for those seeking consistency and quality in their dairy production.

Diego Pinzon and the Fearful Voyage He Took Into the Unknown Ocean A.D. 1492
John Russell Coryell
The unknown ocean of 1492 holds more than just sea monsters; it hides a path to a fabled land of gold and the true coming-of-age for two young stowaways.

Drawing Rooms, Second Floor, and Attics: A Farce, in One Act
John Maddison Morton
A young chemist’s frantic, soot-stained quest to find his sweetheart in London turns into a chaotic game of hide-and-seek throughout a multi-story house.

Duty, and Other Irish Comedies
Seumas O'Brien
These sharp, witty one-act plays skewer the pretensions of rural Irish life, where local police, publicans, and schemers trade barbs and whiskey in a dance of perpetual, hollow posturing.

English Law and the Renaissance: The Rede Lecture for 1901
Frederic William Maitland
This inquiry explores why English common law, uniquely among the legal systems of Europe, resisted the pervasive "Reception" of Roman law during the Renaissance, preserving its own distinct identity.

Fair to Look Upon
Mary Belle Freeley
A cheeky, lighthearted reappraisal of Old Testament heroines, framing biblical history as an unbroken tradition of feminine independence and male compliance.

Fanciful tales
Frank R. Stockton
This collection of short stories presents a whimsical, thoughtful landscape where magical entities, humble laborers, and mischievous children navigate the quiet moral complexities of everyday life.

Finding the Lost Treasure
Helen M. Persons
Tasked with decoding a cryptic family heirloom, three orphaned siblings navigate the rugged beauty of Nova Scotia to secure their future and uncover a hidden inheritance.

Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession: A Novel
Benjamin Wood
The shadows of the American Civil War fall heavy upon personal loyalties in this tale of fractured kinship and ideological strife. It captures the desperate struggle to maintain love and individual conscience when a nation descends into violent, brother-against-brother conflict.

Frank Reade, Jr., and his new steam man
Luis Senarens
An ingenious young inventor journeys into the American West to rescue an innocent man, using a groundbreaking mechanical marvel to outwit outlaws and predators.

Frederica and her Guardians
Margaret M. (Margaret Murray) Robertson
This novel follows the spiritual and physical maturation of a young girl navigating the loss of her parents and the religious tensions surrounding her family’s future. It is a story of quiet endurance and the search for authentic faith.

French Painting of the 19th Century in the National Gallery of Art
Grose Evans
This curated guide explores the transformative century of French painting, tracing the evolution from rigid academic classicism to the vibrant, experimental origins of modern art.

From the Ranks
Charles King
Suspicion, scandal, and a midnight gun-shot shatter the quiet routine of a post-Civil War garrison, leaving a proud regiment torn between its rigid code of honor and the shadowy secrets of those who serve within its gates.

Girls in Bookland
Hildegarde Hawthorne
HOOK Two sisters discover that their bookshelves are gateways to a vivid, magical world where the heroines of classic literature come to life. They embark on an enchanting journey through the pages of history and fiction.

Going-to-the-Sun
Vachel Lindsay
A surreal, illustrated journey through the high peaks of Glacier Park, this work blends mountain-climbing memoirs with whimsical, self-invented hieroglyphics and flights of poetic fancy.

Gravy Train
Daniel F. Galouye
A simple request for a bathroom appliance triggers an accidental cosmic aid war, burying a peaceful retiree’s planetoid under an avalanche of unwanted, galaxy-altering supplies.

Grim Green World
Roger D. Aycock
The Luna V is the fifth vessel to attempt a lunar landing, but its crew already knows the grim truth: space is not a vacuum, but a lethal gauntlet of high-speed meteoric dust.

Happy Ending
Mack Reynolds
The fallen dictator of a ruined galaxy seeks refuge on a primitive planet, only to find that his delusions of grandeur cannot survive the cold, unyielding reality of a jungle ecosystem.

Heist Job on Thizar
Randall Garrett
The galaxy’s most daring jewel thieves are not merely interested in wealth; they thrive on the sophisticated, high-stakes game of outsmarting an enemy who believes they are already one step ahead.

Hildebrand
Anonymous
This historical romance captures the turbulent, shifting loyalties of Elizabethan England through the eyes of a young traveler caught in a web of religious intrigue and personal danger. It is a work of high stakes, where the quiet of a country estate is frequently shattered by the sudden, heavy hand of political…

Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. 2 of 6, slice 06 of 12: England, 1189-1199, Richard I
Raphael Holinshed
This chronicle captures the turbulent decade of Richard the Lionheart, a reign defined by crusading zeal, royal avarice, and the fragile stability of a kingdom under the shadow of its own absent monarch.

Holly: The Romance of a Southern Girl
Ralph Henry Barbour
The story of an impressionable young woman and a weary traveler finding common ground, this quiet, character-driven romance explores the intersection of Southern tradition and new beginnings.

Hostage of Tomorrow
Robert Abernathy
Two American soldiers stumble into a future dominated by a triumphant Nazi regime, only to find themselves fighting a desperate, multi-century war to erase their own grim timeline.

How We Robbed Mexico in 1848
Robert Harrison Howe
This work examines the Mexican-American War as a calculated act of territorial theft driven by the expansionist ambitions of the nineteenth-century slave power and twentieth-century financial interests.

In the Arena: Stories of Political Life
Booth Tarkington
An old political insider's clear-eyed tour through the backrooms, saloons, and statehouses where ordinary Americans fight, fail, and bargain for power.

In the Rockies with Kit Carson
John T. (John Thomas) McIntyre
This historical adventure follows the legendary frontiersman Kit Carson through the untamed Rocky Mountains of the 1830s, chronicling a perilous search for stolen treasure and the harsh realities of life in the American West.

Intermere
William Alexander Taylor
This narrative presents a vision of a lost, technologically advanced civilization existing in a hidden, terrestrial paradise, offering a critique of turn-of-the-century Western society through the eyes of a bewildered visitor.

Jane Cable
George Barr McCutcheon
A high-society secret threatens to tear two Chicago lovers apart when past sins catch up with their families.

Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave
Isaac Mason
Born into the brutal machinery of American chattel slavery, a man struggles through decades of forced labor and displacement to finally secure his own hard-won freedom in the North.

Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A solitary child, confined to a quiet room by illness, travels the globe through the power of a giant sphere and her own vivid imagination.