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42,801 public-domain books, summarised. Page 780 of 892.

The Calico Cat
Charles Miner Thompson
A nervous village busybody and a misunderstood boy become entangled in a web of pride and secrecy following an accidental, late-night gunshot. This quiet, observant mystery captures the small-town tensions of a New England village at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Camp Fire Boys at Log Cabin Bend
St. George Rathborne
Four teenage boys find adventure and long-lost family ties while camping in the tall timber. Their wilderness retreat turns into a mystery that tests their loyalty and woodcraft skills.

The care of the skin and hair
Morris Fishbein
Modern beauty standards often promise transformation through simple products, but this medical guide from the 1920s reveals the enduring, often dangerous, divide between marketing claims and biological reality.

The Carnivore
Katherine MacLean
In the aftermath of humanity’s self-inflicted extinction, a sole survivor awakens to find her world inherited by terrified, peace-loving aliens. She soon discovers that their offer of salvation is merely a mask for a final, calculated containment.

The Circus Boys in Dixie Land
Edgar B. P. Darlington
Phil Forrest and Teddy Tucker are two ambitious teenagers who have traded their quiet lives in Edmeston for the sawdust and spectacle of the traveling circus. Now seasoned performers, they navigate a world of intense rivalry, daring rescues, and the relentless demands of life on the road.

The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 244 new series, October 1916)
Various
The quiet halls of Oxford and the thunderous, gas-choked trenches of the Great War collide in this late-Victorian and Edwardian literary mosaic. It captures a world on the precipice of irrevocable change, documenting both the intimate struggles of the spirit and the brutal realities of modern combat.

The Deep One
Neil P. Ruzic
A dying race launches the last ship to seed a new world, but survival rests on a brilliant, isolated child who realizes his greatest threat is his own humanity.

The Edge of the Knife
H. Beam Piper
This classic piece of science fiction explores the burden of precognition, focusing on a history professor who begins to experience vivid, accurate memories of future events. It is a taut study of isolation, institutional hostility, and the heavy price of knowing what is yet to come.

The exploration of Tibesti, Erdi, Borkou, and Ennedi in 1912-1917
Jean Tilho
This account documents a rigorous five-year military and scientific survey of the central Sahara, capturing a transformative era of European colonial expansion amidst the shifting sands and rising tensions of the First World War.

The Fatal Glove
Clara Augusta
A young boy’s act of kindness and a stolen token of affection spiral into a decade of vengeance, mistaken identities, and a high-stakes search for truth across the shifting landscapes of the nineteenth-century American city.

The Frugal Life: A Paradox
Ortensio Landi
The art of living well is found not in the abundance of one’s table, but in the restraint of one’s desires. By stripping away the excess of a decadent society, the human spirit is finally free to pursue true wisdom and lasting health.

The girl from Samarcand
E. Hoffmann Price
The pull of the past is a tangible, suffocating weight for a man who finds his present life eclipsed by the haunting, silk-woven memories of a long-dead lover.

The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Part 12
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
A deluded soul traverses the landscape of Spain, transforming mundane reality into a stage for heroic deeds, while those around him struggle to navigate the wreckage of his imagination.

The Home in the Valley
Emilie Flygare-Carlén
This is a gentle, pastoral exploration of domestic life in rural Sweden, where the quiet sanctity of a simple hearth is contrasted with the hollow ambitions of the wealthy. It follows the interconnected lives of a humble family and their meddlesome, aristocratic neighbors, ultimately arguing that genuine…

The Husbands of Edith
George Barr McCutcheon
The quiet charm of a European holiday takes an unexpected turn when a man agrees to pose as his best friend, only to find himself entangled in a web of impersonation and romance.

The hyena
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
This is a harrowing tale of colonial anxiety, where the vast, untamed African veldt serves as a stage for a young man’s obsession with a mysterious, unsettling adversary. It is a story of primal dread, shifting identities, and the thin, blurring line between humanity and the beast.

The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 46, May 15, 1841
Various
This collection serves as a cultural mirror, preserving the folk traditions, genealogical history, and grim social realities of early nineteenth-century Ireland through a series of diverse, episodic reports. It functions as a bridge between the oral storytelling of the past and the documenting impulse of the…

The Last of the Barons
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A grand historical tapestry set against the bloody backdrop of the Wars of the Roses, this epic explores the tragic decline of the old feudal order through the eyes of a legendary power-broker.

The life-masters
Edmond Hamilton
The world wakes to a silent, glistening horror: a mysterious gray slime crawling from the seas to consume humanity. This is a tale of scientific hubris where the architects of extinction are ultimately consumed by their own creation.

The life of John Thompson, a fugitive slave
John Thompson
Born into the brutal reality of Maryland slavery, a young man discovers the transformative power of literacy and faith, ultimately risking everything to secure his own liberty and navigate the unpredictable currents of freedom.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 16: Depart Switzerland
Giacomo Casanova
A wanderer of insatiable appetite, the author navigates the social labyrinths of 18th-century France, trading in wit, astrology, and the unpredictable nature of human desire.

The Mentor: The Story of Coal, vol. 6, Num. 6, Serial No. 154, May 1, 1918
Charles Fitzhugh Talman
Coal is the dark, foundational fuel of the industrial age, a substance that links the ancient, prehistoric swamp to the modern machine. It is the primary engine of labor, heat, and global conflict.

The Merry Wives of Windsor
William Shakespeare
When a boastful, penniless knight attempts to woo two married women simultaneously, he finds himself ensnared in a web of elaborate, hilarious traps. In this world, the hunters quickly become the hunted.

The neutral merchant: in relation to the law of contraband of war and blockade under the order in Council of 11th March, 1915
Francis Taylor Piggott
This legal analysis examines the collision between British naval policy and neutral trade rights during the First World War, arguing that the necessities of modern conflict fundamentally reshape traditional maritime law.

The Philosophy of Health; Volume 2 (of 2)
Southwood Smith
The human body is an intricate machine defined by constant, vital chemical exchanges, where every heartbeat and breath serves a singular purpose: the maintenance of life through the perpetual renewal of its internal environment.

The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor
Helen Rowland
A spirited bachelor navigates the social traps of early twentieth-century courtship, armed with wit, cigars, and a fervent determination to remain a free agent.

The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West
Emerson Hough
In this rugged Western, a displaced city woman and a simple-hearted homesteader navigate a marriage born of a ruse, finding redemption against the backdrop of a changing, violent frontier.

The Shaving of Shagpat; an Arabian entertainment
George Meredith
A young barber sets out across a surreal, magical landscape to fulfill a fated task: the shaving of a legendary, enchanted figure.

The story of iron
Elizabeth Ida Samuel
A young boy’s life changes when he becomes an office helper at a bustling foundry, leading him to discover the secrets of industry, the weight of responsibility, and the history of the metal that builds the world.

The swamp was upside down
Murray Leinster
HOOK A seasoned surveyor arrives on a failing colony planet to confront a geological catastrophe: the very ground is liquefying and sliding into the sea.

The Tattva-Muktavali
active 17th century Gaudapurnanandacakravarti
This polemical poem serves as a spirited defense of dualism, challenging the assertion that the individual soul and the supreme Divine are one and the same.

The Very Small Person
Annie Hamilton Donnell
A series of gentle, interconnected sketches reveals the inner lives of children living in the shadow of adult indifference, showing how their small hearts yearn for the simple, transformative power of being wanted.

The will to live (Les Roquevillard)
Henry Bordeaux
The weight of a family’s reputation and the pull of individual desire collide in this study of duty, honor, and the enduring strength of heritage.

There was an old woman—
Robert Silverberg
The lives of thirty-one identical brothers are meticulously scripted by a mother determined to prove that environment, not heredity, defines the soul. The resulting experiment, however, carries a price that only the sons can pay.

University of California Library Handbook 1918-1919
University of California (1868-1952). Library
This handbook serves as a definitive guide to the infrastructure, procedures, and expectations of a major research institution, mapping the physical and intellectual landscape of the University of California Library during the 1918–1919 academic year.

Vixen, Volume III
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
Caught between the suffocating expectations of a new stepfather and the loss of her childhood friend, a young woman finds herself exiled to a distant manor, only to discover the path back to her own life.

What's Mine's Mine
George MacDonald
The contrast between the soul’s hunger and the world’s hollow ambitions defines a journey through the Scottish Highlands. This narrative explores the tension between ancestral heritage and the encroaching, disconnected values of the modern era.

Woodburn Grange: A story of English country life
William Howitt
A serene English countryside becomes a battlefield of clashing traditions, where rigid religious devotion and modern ambition collide to shatter the quiet lives of families caught in the crossfire.

A Letter to the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill
Franklin Dexter
Public officials are often tempted to justify their legislative record with revisionist history, but some arguments are so transparently fragile that they invite a dismantling of both the politician’s logic and his integrity.

A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat
Burton Egbert Stevenson
HOOK This historical narrative traces the formative, often painful, experiences of a young Virginian soldier serving under George Washington during the disastrous military campaigns of the mid-eighteenth century.

A Spaceship Named McGuire
Randall Garrett
A pilot is hired to protect a headstrong heiress and solve the sabotage of a robotic spaceship, only to discover the ship has a mind—and a very specific, stubborn personality—of its own.

A Spinner in the Sun
Myrtle Reed
A woman hiding a disfigured past behind a veil finds her reclusive life disrupted by the arrival of a spirited young girl and a man who refuses to look away. This quiet, evocative narrative explores the weight of long-held secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness.

Assyrian Historiography: A Source Study
A. T. (Albert Ten Eyck) Olmstead
A critical examination of ancient royal inscriptions reveals how Assyrian scribes systematically altered history across successive generations, transforming raw battlefield reports into sanitized propaganda.

Bandit Love
Juanita Savage
A beautiful young Englishwoman finds her life turned upside down when a charming, arrogant Spanish nobleman decides that he—and not her dull, predictable fiancé—is the only man worthy of her spirit.

Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes. Volume II
Walter De la Mare
HOOK This collection captures the thin, translucent veil between the familiar world of childhood and an unsettling, moonlit realm where nature and folklore collide.

Daisy Burns (Volume 1)
Julia Kavanagh
The windswept cliffs of the English coast offer a solitary girl nothing but the rhythm of the sea, until an older, magnetic stranger arrives to claim her life and heart as his own.

Dotty Dimple Out West
Sophie May
A vain little girl learns that the world is far larger and kinder than her own reflection.

Elizabeth: the Disinherited Daughter: By E. Ben Ez-er
Ebenezer Arnold
The daughter of a wealthy farmer loses her inheritance for the sake of her faith, choosing the fervor of early American Methodism over the strictures of her father’s household.