The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 763
44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 763 of 920.
The Story of a Plush Bear
Laura Lee Hope
A plush bear journeys from the magical workshops of the North Pole to a seaside vacation, navigating the perils of being a forgotten plaything in a world of giants.
The three sphinxes, and other poems
George Sylvester Viereck
The poet stands at the intersection of history and desire, searching for meaning in the wreckage of broken gods and fleeting loves. These verses trace a restless journey through the tension between the spirit and the senses.
The truce of God: A tale of the eleventh century
George H. (George Henry) Miles
A tragic feudal blood feud threatens to consume two noble families until the church intervenes with a solemn mandate of peace.
The Turquoise Cup, and, the Desert
Arthur Cosslett Smith
Two distinct tales of devotion explore how love defies social, religious, and material boundaries in Venice and the Sahara.
The Vee-Boers: A Tale of Adventure in Southern Africa
Mayne Reid
A group of colonial farmers, stripped of their livestock by the hazards of the African wilderness, must navigate a perilous river journey to reclaim their fortunes and return to their Transvaal home.
The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790
Theodore Roosevelt
The young nation’s survival depends on the unruly, rifle-bearing frontiersmen who claim the western woods. Amidst broken treaties, brutal skirmishes, and shifting allegiances, these pioneers test whether a democracy can expand without shattering into pieces.
The wooing of Leola
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A young woman’s romantic fate hangs in the balance, caught between a sinister guardian’s schemes, a jealous rival’s deceptions, and the heroic devotion of a man who traveled across the country to find her.
The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Volume 3 of 3: An account of the mutiny of the crew and the loss of the ship when trying to make the Bermudas
William Clark Russell
The sea is a place of absolute indifference where only the strongest survive, but even in the deepest despair, human connection becomes the final, fragile rigging that keeps a soul afloat against the crushing weight of the waves.
Trapped in 'Black Russia': Letters June-November 1915
Ruth Pierce
Caught in the web of wartime bureaucracy, an American woman records the grim realities of the Russian home front as freedom turns into house arrest.
Tumbleweeds
Hal G. (Hal George) Evarts
The encroaching fences of progress spell the end for a vanishing breed of drifters, forcing a choice between the freedom of the open range and the permanence of a settled life.
Under the Liberty Tree: A Story of The 'Boston Massacre'
James Otis
In 1770, four Boston boys find themselves caught in the escalating tension between British troops and local citizens, culminating in a tragedy that alters the course of American history.
Valencia and Murcia, a glance at African Spain
Albert Frederick Calvert
The sun-drenched plains of Valencia and Murcia reveal a land where ancient Moorish ingenuity still sustains a modern, thriving garden. This account captures the vibrant, precarious intersection of human industry and the relentless heat of the Spanish south.
Vick's Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 17, No. 5, March, 1894
Various
A seasonal guide for the nineteenth-century gardener, this collection balances practical horticultural advice with the era’s distinct social values and a relentless spirit of commerce.
Wanderlust
Alan Edward Nourse
The call of the stars is a siren song that no amount of earthly love or reasoning can silence. For a father who has tasted that dangerous freedom, the hardest lesson is learning when to let his son walk into the void.
Wessex
Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
The rugged, ancient landscapes of southwest England offer a window into history where rural tradition and literary imagination converge. This tour invites travelers to step away from the modern world and into a place of enduring legends.
When Polly Was Eighteen
Emma C. Dowd
A young woman balances the heavy emotional demands of a volatile suitor with her newfound, deeply fulfilling role as a nurse to children in need.
Words for the Wise
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
This collection of moral tales serves as a mirror for the nineteenth-century American conscience, illustrating how small personal choices ripple outward into life-altering consequences. It is a straightforward, didactic exploration of integrity, vanity, and the heavy costs of living without self-reflection.
Yuletide entertainments
Ellen M. (Ellen Melville) Willard
A Victorian-era manual of festive performance, this collection provides the essential blueprints for school and parlor celebrations, blending heartfelt recitations with precise, rhythmic drills to capture the magic of the holiday season.
A Child's Anti-Slavery Book: Containing a Few Words about American Slave Children and Stories
Various
By contrasting the natural rights of free children with the brutal realities of human bondage, these stories serve as an urgent, compassionate plea for the abolition of American slavery.
A Day in a Colonial Home
Della R. Prescott
This earnest account invites readers into the heartbeat of early American life, where the fireside serves as the center of all industry, devotion, and family tradition. Through the eyes of a dutiful young woman, the domestic rhythms of a bygone era emerge in vivid, tangible detail.
A Far Country
Winston Churchill
To pursue success at any price is to lose one’s own soul; this is the hard-won realization of a man who traded his integrity for a seat among the elite.
A godly medytacyon of the christen sowle, concerninge a loue towardes God and hys Christe
Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of Navarre
This earnest devotional work offers an intimate, lyrical portrait of a soul struggling to reconcile its own frailty with the overwhelming, unearned love of Christ.
A Great Emergency and Other Tales
Juliana Horatia Ewing
A collection of four Victorian tales explores the turbulent inner lives of children as they navigate jealousy, pride, and the deep desire to prove their courage.
A knight of the air
Henry Tracey Coxwell
The skies of late Victorian England belong to the bold, but they are also a refuge for the desperate and the duplicitous. In this tale of aerial ambition, a young man discovers that the higher he rises, the more dangerous his enemies become.
A Likely Story
Damon Knight
A chance encounter at a writer’s club party reveals a terrifyingly simple, world-altering invention. One fan’s secret ambition turns an evening of slapstick chaos into a journey toward the stars.
A narrative of the sufferings, preservation and deliverance, of Capt. John Dean and company: in the Nottingham galley of London, cast away on Boon-Island, near New England, December 11, 1710
John Dean
This account of a 1710 shipwreck details the harrowing survival of a merchant crew stranded on a barren rock, offering a stark, unvarnished look at human endurance in the face of inevitable death.
A year in China
Martha Noyes Williams
The author recounts a journey spanning the globe, detailing her observations of foreign lands and her harrowing experience as a civilian captive aboard a Confederate commerce raider during the American Civil War.
An Act in a Backwater
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
In a quiet English town, the pompous delusions of a local blowhard spark a social comedy that eventually gives way to unexpected depths of human crisis and quiet, resilient grace.
Ara vus prec
T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
The modern soul finds itself drifting through a landscape of fractured memories and dry, urban decay. These poems capture the precise moment when the weight of history becomes too heavy to carry, yet too familiar to discard.
Beadle's Dime Song Book No. 1: A Collection of New and Popular Comic and Sentimental Songs
Various
These collected lyrics offer a rhythmic window into the sentimental, comic, and patriotic pulse of 1860s America. They capture the era’s preoccupations with home, duty, and the shifting landscape of a nation in transition.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 02 of 10: the Humourous Lieutenant
John Fletcher
A young prince fights for military glory while his royal father secretly plots to steal the woman he loves. In this classic seventeenth-century tragicomedy, courtly honor and raw desire collide on and off the battlefield.
Bertha and Her Baptism
Nehemiah Adams
A pastoral narrative explores the deep spiritual comfort, scriptural foundations, and enduring family legacy of covenant infant baptism.
Bertha, Our Little German Cousin
Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade
In the valleys of the Black Forest, a young girl carves toy legs for a living, dreaming over ancient castles, river legends, and family songs.
Biddy and the silver man
Harlan Ellison
A man from the stars arrives in the Arizona desert, offering a brief, luminous chance for humanity to abandon its self-destructive path before the silence of the void consumes its petty, earthbound fears.
Black ivory
Polan Banks
A swashbuckling historical romance set in the untamed Louisiana of the early 1800s, where a gentleman pirate navigates the blurred lines between lawless smuggling, personal honor, and the defense of a nation.
Blood lands
Alfred Coppel
A lone starman confronts the horrific truth about a lost colony, where a desperate, regressed human population has traded its humanity to survive. The planet Kana is not merely a home; it is a predator.
Boys of Other Countries
Bayard Taylor
Global travel and the resilience of youth define this collection of interconnected narratives. Through encounters in Sweden, Egypt, Iceland, and beyond, the author celebrates the courage, ingenuity, and inherent dignity of boys navigating their worlds.
Bulldog And Butterfly: From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
David Christie Murray
A persistent, steady-hearted man and a lively, mercurial youth compete for the hand of a thoughtful young woman in a quiet, rural corner of England. Their rivalry forces each man to reveal his true character under pressure.
Buster the Big Brown Bear
George Ethelbert Walsh
A young bear learns that true freedom is worth the grueling journey home, even when human kindness offers a tempting, caged alternative.
Cactus and Rattlers
H. (Henry) Bedford-Jones
A desert traveler adopts a clever ruse to infiltrate a ring of land swindlers, exposing their lethal deceptions while crossing paths with a resourceful newcomer. This brisk, atmospheric tale captures the harsh beauty and simmering danger of the American frontier.
Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon
Caine, Hall, Sir
A rough Manx sailor returns from sea with a fortune, marries his childhood sweetheart, and promptly loses her to the wedge of her newly acquired upper-class refinement.
Chambers's Elementary Science Readers: Book I
Various
A simple garden stroll expands into a systematic discovery of nature, industry, and the physical materials shaping everyday Victorian life.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 36, Vol. I, September 6, 1884
Various
This Victorian anthology offers a panoramic window into the late 19th-century British mind, blending technical industry reports with sentimental moralizing and social observation. It captures a culture deeply invested in the mechanics of progress and the rigid structures of tradition.
Charter and Supplemental Charter of the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
A single legal grant transforms an unexplored wilderness into a vast commercial empire, establishing the machinery of British colonial trade across North America.
Clean Break
Roger D. Aycock
A shy, suburban veterinarian finds the courage to shed his stifling family obligations when a mysterious client invites him into a world of extraterrestrial wonder. He discovers that the most mundane life can be transformed by a single, decisive moment of rebellion.
Cowmen and Rustlers: A Story of the Wyoming Cattle Ranges
Edward Sylvester Ellis
A long-simmering feud between Wyoming stockmen and range thieves boils over when a young easterner joins his college friend on a powder-keg frontier.
Creepin' Tintypes
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Two hapless drifters are roped into a filmmaker’s disastrous attempt to capture the "real" West, leading to a botched bank robbery and a frantic, chaotic flight from the law in the town of Piperock.
Edinburgh Papers. Edinburgh Merchants and Merchandise in Old Times
Robert Chambers
This historical portrait traces the rise of the Edinburgh merchant class from humble beginnings to significant national influence. It documents how trade shaped the city’s social fabric and its most enduring family legacies.