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44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 769 of 920.

Blister Jones
John Taintor Foote
The track is a world unto itself, a place where the high stakes of the racing game are played out by men who live on the margins and horses that run on heart. These linked stories capture the grit, the humor, and the quiet dignity of a life lived in the stables and the betting rings.

Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2, No. 18, March, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
This collection captures the irreverent spirit of 1920s American humor, offering a sprawling mix of jokes, anecdotes, and observations that reflect the anxieties and distractions of the post-war era. It serves as a time capsule of a specific, rowdy brand of pop culture.

Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 28, December, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
The December 1921 edition of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang offers a frenetic, irreverent snapshot of early Prohibition-era America, capturing a nation navigating the tension between traditional morality and a new, restless appetite for urban vice and wit.

Cocke Lorelles Bote
Anonymous
A lawless tinker summons a rogue’s gallery of knaves to board a vessel, sailing across England to celebrate the vices of the common man in a cacophony of riotous, unrepentant revelry.

Coloured engravings of heaths
Andrews, Henry Cranke, active 1799-1828
A meticulous botanical survey of the *Erica* genus, capturing the intricate, fragile beauty of heaths through precise anatomical observation and elegant classification.

Cry Snooker
Andrew Fetler
HOOK A suburban couple’s appliance-shipping error triggers a global crisis of "Senseless Destruction," forcing them to abandon their hollow, debt-ridden prosperity for a primitive life in the wilderness.

Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
A singular window into the Restoration, this private record captures the daily pulse of a man navigating the high-stakes bureaucracy and intimate scandals of 17th-century London.

Doorway to Kal-Jmar
Damon Knight
The mystery of an ancient, sealed Martian city promises infinite riches to any man ruthless enough to claim them. But in this city of ghosts, the ultimate prize demands more than just a key.

Emancipation and Emigration: A Plan to Transfer the Freedmen of the South to the Government Lands of the West by The Principia Club
Anonymous
This document serves as a desperate, impassioned manifesto for a mass migration of African Americans from the post-Reconstruction South to the Western territories. It is a radical call for autonomy through geographic displacement.

Emergency Childbirth: A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help Training Course, Lesson No. 11
United States. Office of Civil Defense
A calm hand in a dark hour, this cold-war manual strips obstetric care down to its barest essentials.

Essay on art and photography
A. V. Sutton
This essay provides an earnest, mid-Victorian defense of photography as a vital partner to the fine arts, rather than a mechanical threat to the painter’s craft. It serves as a manifesto for the dignity of the new medium.

Forty-Two Poems
James Elroy Flecker
This collection of forty-two poems distills a brief, brilliant life into verses that bridge the divide between the classical Mediterranean past and the haunting, smoky landscapes of early twentieth-century London. It is a work of restless curiosity, where the ache of mortality meets the defiance of the artist.

From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade
Frederic C. (Crawford) Curry
HOOK This account captures the transformation of a volunteer from a Canadian town into a seasoned trench soldier, documenting the brutal collision between Victorian idealism and the industrial reality of the Great War.

Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College
Josephine Chase
The return to campus life promises growth and challenges, as a group of devoted friends navigates the complexities of sophomore year at Overton College.

Handyman
Frank Banta
Trapped on a desolate, war-torn Earth, a convict and a robotic craftsman engage in a repetitive cycle of destruction and repair that mirrors the futility of their abandoned existence.

Harper's Young People, December 6, 1881: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
A curated glimpse into the Victorian imagination, this weekly periodical blends travelogues, historical sketches, and children’s correspondence to offer a window into the late nineteenth-century American home.

Harper's Young People, July 18, 1882: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
This collection of illustrated weekly dispatches captures the Victorian spirit of childhood, blending practical instruction with imaginative play and moral guidance to offer a window into a bygone era of American youth.

Harvard episodes
Charles Macomb Flandrau
Harvard is not just a university; it is a closed society governed by unspoken codes, and these interconnected stories map the delicate, often cruel, friction between those who belong and those who merely reside within its gates.

Helbeck of Bannisdale
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A young woman's fierce independence collides with an unyielding Catholic faith in a tragic conflict of love, conscience, and stubborn devotion.

Helpfully Yours
Evelyn E. Smith
This satirical science-fiction story follows a young, idealistic Fizbian woman, Tarb Morfatch, as she arrives on Earth to work as an advice columnist for a colonial newspaper, only to find her own people’s cultural practices and bureaucratic deceptions are more stifling than the planet she is meant to observe.

Her own way
Eglanton Thorne
The story of a young woman’s headstrong pursuit of independence, this narrative explores the painful consequences of prioritizing vanity and self-will over family, duty, and spiritual integrity.

Historical Tours in and about Boston: Compliments of American Oil Company
American Oil Company
This guide serves as a practical, time-capsule companion for the mid-1930s motorist, mapping out the essential landmarks of Boston and its surrounding historical orbit. It transforms the city into a series of reachable, bite-sized itineraries for the curious traveler.

Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. 1 of 6, slice 8 of 9. England, early history
Raphael Holinshed
This chronicle documents the turbulent twilight of the Anglo-Saxon era, tracing the relentless Danish incursions that pushed England to the brink of ruin and ultimate conquest. It captures a cycle of betrayal, foreign occupation, and internal moral decay.

Home Lights and Shadows
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
HOME! How at the word, a crowd of pleasant thoughts awaken. Yet, there is no home without its shadows as well as sunshine, and it is rarely that we confess our faults without a resolution to overcome the evil.

Incidents on land and water
D. B. (Dolly B.) Bates
A harrowing and deeply personal chronicle of the California Gold Rush, this narrative recounts a perilous journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific, defined by repeated shipwrecks, fires at sea, and the raw, unpredictable frontier life of the early 1850s.

Indian Legends and Other Poems
Mary Gardiner Horsford
Tragic legends of loss and longing meet domestic quietude in a mid-nineteenth-century volume where mortal lives dissolve quickly into memory, spirit, and star.

Inter-Ocean Hunting Tales
Edgar Fritz Randolph
These accounts capture the rugged, fading frontier of the American West, where the pursuit of game serves as a vessel for quiet reflection on nature, human endurance, and the necessary compromises of a sportsman’s life.

John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 03 (of 10): Japan I, Japan II, China
John L. (John Lawson) Stoddard
The world has grown small, yet the wonder of distant lands remains undiminished. These lectures offer a window into the Japan and China of the late nineteenth century, capturing a moment when ancient traditions met the rapid march of modern progress.

Journal of the Waterloo campaign, vol. 1 (of 2)
Cavalié Mercer
This journal offers a rare, ground-level perspective on the Napoleonic Wars, capturing the visceral reality of 1815 through the eyes of a professional soldier. It strips away the pomp of history to reveal the grit, exhaustion, and sudden, chaotic violence of a campaign that shaped the modern world.

Limitations: A Novel
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
HOOK A portrait of a young man’s collision with the boundaries of his own ambition, where the vibrant promise of artistic creation meets the cold reality of finite human capability.

Little Alfred
L. A. (Lydia Austin) Holdich
A gentle, instructive narrative, this book gathers stories of childhood obedience and faith, using the quiet rhythm of family life and biblical allegory to encourage young readers toward a life of devotion and moral clarity.

Little Yellow Wang-lo
M. C. Bell
A young boy’s errand to provide his father with dinner spirals into an unlikely alliance with a family of talking pigs, leading to a fortune that changes his life forever.

Madelon: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The quietude of a snow-bound village is shattered by a violent act of passion, setting in motion a dark drama where honor, self-sacrifice, and the tangled roots of love collide.

Married or single?, Vol. 1 (of 3)
B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker
A young woman, cast aside by her boarding school, must navigate the treacherous divide between her desperate poverty and a sudden, deceptive inheritance from a long-lost father.

Memoirs of Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz
This is the candid, high-stakes confession of a seventeenth-century archbishop who traded his cassock for the dangerous, intoxicating arena of political insurrection.

Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de
A chronicle of absolute power and its slow decay, this work captures the intricate, stifling, and often absurd reality of life within the gilded cage of the French monarchy.

Memorials and Other Papers
Thomas De Quincey
This collection gathers distinct exercises in narrative atmosphere and intellectual rigor, moving from the shadow-haunted streets of a besieged city to the austere, high-stakes debates of nineteenth-century political theory.

Men I'm Not Married To
Franklin P. (Franklin Pierce) Adams
HOOK A series of wry, observational sketches mapping the minor personality quirks and social habits that keep a bachelor safely single.

Mexican letters written during the progress of the late war between the United States and Mexico, no. 1
H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge
A series of urgent, mid-nineteenth-century letters defends the morality of the Mexican-American War while navigating the complex political tensions of a fracturing nation.

My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale
Thomas Woolner
An earnest, elevate-the-spirit Victorian verse narrative that turns devastating personal bereavement into a lifelong vow of civic duty and high artistic purpose.

Myra
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A daughter’s lifelong crusade against powerful interests to reclaim her birthright, this narrative blends historical intrigue with the intimate, often tragic, struggles of a woman navigating a world of betrayal and hidden wills.

Nick Carter Stories No. 152, August 7, 1915: The Forced Crime
Nicholas (House name) Carter
A brilliant detective uncovers a sinister plot involving hypnotism, stolen state papers, and a mysterious cult leader masquerading as an East Indian scholar in early twentieth-century Brooklyn.

Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This periodical serves as a Victorian-era clearinghouse for the curious, where scholars and enthusiasts gather to trade historical minutiae, resolve textual ambiguities, and share the fruits of their private research.

Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This periodical functions as a nineteenth-century clearinghouse for human curiosity, gathering the scattered scraps of history, language, and tradition that might otherwise vanish from collective memory. It serves as a Victorian-era forum where amateur scholars and professionals alike trade facts, solve minor…

Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 120, February 14, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This Victorian periodical captures the intellectual curiosity of its time, functioning as a collaborative clearinghouse for historical enigmas, folklore, and scholarly debates. It remains a fascinating map of the mid-nineteenth-century mind.

Nothing to Eat
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A wealthy New York woman sits down to a lavish multi-course feast and spends the entire two hours complaining that she has nothing to eat.

On the Equator
Harry De Windt
A Victorian gentleman ventures into the heart of Borneo, documenting a world of head-hunting tribes, colonial outposts, and the encroaching modern era.

Pee-wee Harris in camp
Percy Keese Fitzhugh
Pee-wee Harris, a tiny, irrepressible scout with a penchant for grand schemes, turns a summer encampment into a whirlwind of theatrical ambition, financial enterprise, and unintentional heroism.