The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 847
44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 847 of 920.
Boy meets dyevitza
Robert F. Young
HOOK Two rival astronauts from Earth land on Venus, only to be forced into a strange, binding marriage by a society of bronze-age puritans.
Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island
Gordon (Adventure story writer) Stuart
The boys of Watertown seek adventure in the tall grasses and river currents, unaware that their search for a missing friend will soon take them into the sky.
Boys of the Old Sea Bed: Tales of Nature and Adventure
Charles Allen McConnell
HOOK In the rugged Wisconsin wilderness of the 1870s, two brothers navigate the harsh demands of frontier survival, enduring fire, floods, and the moral trials of a young man’s coming of age.
Bred in the bone: 1908
Thomas Nelson Page
The pedigree of a horse and the character of a man are tested against the relentless pace of a high-stakes steeplechase. It is a story of tradition, resilience, and the quiet dignity of a horseman from the Virginia countryside.
Bressant: A Novel
Julian Hawthorne
A cold, brilliant intellectual experiment collides with the messy, inconvenient realities of the human heart. This story tracks the dangerous results of a social and emotional upbringing conducted in a vacuum.
Camion cartoons
Kirkland Hart Day
A weary soldier drives his supply truck through the closing weeks of the Great War, capturing the exhaustion, absurdity, and quiet miracles of life in the Reserve Mallet.
Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls
Jean Turner-Zimmermann
A doctor's exposé of Chicago's white slave trade, where girls are lured, trapped, and sold into prostitution.
Coal and Candlelight, and Other Verses
Helen Parry Eden
A quiet, observant voice seeks meaning amidst the domestic rhythms of a home and the encroaching shadows of a world at war. These verses find the sacred within the mundane, tracing the delicate boundaries between private devotion and public crisis.
Confidential Chats with Girls
William Lee Howard
This guide serves as a candid, no-nonsense manual for adolescent girls, stripping away the era’s suffocating silence to explain the biological and behavioral requirements for lifelong health.
Count Zarka: A Romance
Magnay, William, Sir
A high-stakes game of political espionage unfolds in the shadows of a mountain castle, where a sinister count holds a captive prince and a young woman must navigate a web of deception to survive.
Daddy Takes Us Skating
Howard Roger Garis
A snowy winter evening and a father’s gentle guidance turn a series of chilly outdoor adventures into a warm education about the natural world.
Dear Santa Claus
Various
This collection of holiday-themed stories and poems captures the turn-of-the-century American fascination with childhood innocence, the magic of Christmas, and the simple joys of country life. It serves as a nostalgic window into a world of parlor games, farmyard adventures, and the enduring wonder of St. Nicholas.
Devereux
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
This sweeping historical novel follows the restless, intellectual journey of a young Englishman as he navigates the political intrigue and philosophical crises of the early eighteenth century. It is a portrait of a man shaped by loss, travel, and the arduous search for spiritual certainty.
Diana Tempest, Volume II
Mary Cholmondeley
A high-society romance where a shadow of dark secrets, ancient fortunes, and deadly stakes threatens to undo a budding bond.
Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
This is the candid, unvarnished record of a man navigating the corridors of power and the intimate corners of his own conscience in 17th-century London. It serves as a rare, unfiltered window into the daily life, anxieties, and small pleasures of an era defined by political volatility and personal ambition.
Dutch Methods of Birth Control
Margaret Sanger
This manual demystifies the practical application of reproductive health, offering a historical look at the pioneering Dutch approach to family limitation and the physical methods that enabled it.
Every Soul Hath Its Song
Fannie Hurst
The struggle for human connection in the modern city is a relentless, high-stakes performance. Amidst the shifting landscapes of a rapidly industrializing America, fragile lives collide, trade secrets, and seek a moment of genuine grace.
Farina
George Meredith
HOOK In a medieval Cologne shadowed by legend and dark superstition, a young dreamer must outwit a robber baron and his own insecurities to rescue the woman he loves.
Frank Merriwell's New Comedian
Burt L. Standish
A relentless young achiever faces a series of theatrical disasters and mysterious adversaries, proving that true character is forged through resilience and unwavering moral integrity.
Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade
John Codman
The American merchant marine is dying, not from the wounds of war, but from the self-inflicted chains of protectionist legislation. Only by allowing citizens to buy the best ships available, regardless of their origin, can this vital trade be restored.
Freehold Land Societies: Their History, Present Position, and Claims
J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
This 1853 manifesto serves as a vital historical record of the Freehold Land Movement, a grassroots effort that empowered Victorian working men to purchase property and, by extension, secure the right to vote. It captures a rare moment in history where commercial cooperation directly fueled political reform.
God's Answers: A Record of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada
Clara M. S. Lowe
HOOK Rescuing destitute children from the dark alleys of Victorian London, one determined woman pioneers a new path, finding homes for the forgotten in the vast, open spaces of the Canadian frontier.
Harper's Young People, August 30, 1881: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
The world of the nineteenth-century child unfolds through these pages, blending historical adventure, practical instruction, and the quiet, heartfelt connection of a vast, scattered community of young readers.
Hidden Country
Henry Oyen
Gardner Pitt, a dispirited office clerk, finds his soul’s awakening when an Arctic expedition offers him an escape from the crushing monotony of city life.
How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties
Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington
These recollections of a Louisiana childhood during the Civil War capture the defiance and anxiety of a Southern family navigating the encroaching front lines.
Hunt the red roe
John Jakes
The hunter sought only to escape his poverty, but in the shimmering fog of Venus, he found a target that forced him to choose between his survival and his soul.
In the Closed Room
Frances Hodgson Burnett
A lonely, imaginative child discovers a bridge between the weary, material world and a hidden realm of light. Her quiet, internal life leads her to a spectral companion, blurring the boundary between existence and what lies beyond.
Inhibition
James Causey
An interstellar agent tasked with suppressing human growth finds his cold, calculated mission upended when he discovers the true nature of the colonists he was sent to destroy.
It May Be True, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
This mid-Victorian melodrama centers on the intersecting lives of a landed family and their dependents, where social expectations and hidden romantic longings lead to profound personal turmoil. It explores the heavy, often tragic, cost of pride and the quiet suffering of those trapped in loveless or misunderstood…
It pays to advertise
Roi Cooper Megrue
Advertising is a powerful, if sometimes absurd, force that shapes the modern world and, occasionally, the fortunes of those clever enough to harness it.
John Pettie, R.A., H.R.S.A.: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work
Martin Hardie
This study captures the life and vivid, dramatic work of John Pettie, a nineteenth-century Scottish painter who rose from humble beginnings to become a celebrated master of color and historical narrative.
Letters and discussions on the formation of Colored regiments and the duty of the Colored people in regard to the Great Slaveholders' Rebellion, in the United States of America
Alfred M. Green
This collection of letters and public addresses captures a vital, urgent debate among Black Americans in 1861 regarding their role in the Civil War. It stands as a primary record of the intellectual struggle to define freedom and citizenship during the nation's darkest hour.
Lost Nellie
Pansy
This collection of stories captures the earnest, often difficult, and deeply moral world of childhood in the late nineteenth century. Through a series of vignettes, it explores how small incidents—a lost child, a broken curtain, or a trivial playground argument—serve as testing grounds for character, faith, and…
Ludicrous Aspects Of Christianity: A Response To The Challenge Of The Bishop Of Manchester
Austin Holyoake
This polemical tract challenges the unquestioned sanctity of Christian doctrine by applying a literal, skeptical reading to the contradictions found within the four Gospels.
Man-Trap
Hal Annas
This story follows a self-proclaimed woman-hater who finds his defenses dismantled by a neighbor wielding a mysterious, scientific form of attraction. It serves as a lighthearted, mid-century commentary on the inevitable collision between rigid cynicism and human chemistry.
Many Gods
Cale Young Rice
A traveler’s meditation on global faiths and the relentless sea, these poems capture the search for meaning in a world where gods are many and time is fleeting.
Mike Marble: His Crotchets and Oddities
Francis C. (Francis Channing) Woodworth
A portrait of a singular, big-hearted man who teaches us that eccentric habits need not prevent a life of profound kindness and community service. This gentle, episodic narrative reflects on the simple virtues of a bygone New England.
Mr. Caxton draws a Martian bird
Frank Belknap Long
In this chilling tale of colonial isolation, a cruel guardian faces the consequences of his own hubris when he dismisses a child’s genuine encounter with a deadly, unseen inhabitant of the Martian wilderness.
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
Folkloric tradition breathes life into the American landscape, transforming historical sites and quiet corners of the Eastern seaboard into stages for ghosts, pirates, and divine interventions.
Never Again! A Protest and a Warning Addressed to the Peoples of Europe
Edward Carpenter
The world stands at a crossroads, where the relentless march of scientific destruction forces humanity to choose between self-obliteration and a new, unified era of global peace.
"Next Stop, Nowhere!"
Dick Purcell
An elevator becomes a gateway between realities, trapping four disparate people in a world where the laws of scale have shifted entirely. This sudden transition reveals that a terrifying transformation is not a random accident, but a calculated delivery.
Nibsy's Christmas
Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis
Child newsboys, destitute families, and homeless boys search for warmth, safety, and a sliver of holiday joy across the freezing, neglected tenement blocks of nineteenth-century New York.
Night and Morning, Volume 1
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A sudden death strips two brothers of their inheritance and social standing, forcing them to navigate a world that views their poverty as a moral failing and their legitimacy as an inconvenient lie.
No-Time-Land: A Story for Girls and Boys
M. J. C. (Mary J. C.) Fulton
A young boy’s habit of dismissing requests with the phrase "I have no time" triggers a strange, cautionary journey into a realm where his own excuse becomes his prison.
Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This mid-Victorian periodical serves as a sprawling, decentralized clearinghouse for the collective curiosities of nineteenth-century scholars, antiquarians, and lay researchers. It functions as a printed forum where historical, linguistic, and scientific enigmas are presented for communal resolution.
Notes and Queries, Number 42, August 17, 1850
Various
A mid-century forum for the curious, this collection serves as a vibrant, communal archive for scholars and enthusiasts to trade knowledge on everything from obscure linguistic roots to the minutiae of history.
Olympian Nights
John Kendrick Bangs
A weary traveler in Greece stumbles upon the secret threshold of the gods, only to find the high-minded deities of legend are preoccupied with the mundane inconveniences of modern life.
On the King's Service: Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms
Innes Logan
A Scottish army chaplain bears witness to the quiet fortitude, shattered bodies, and enduring faith of soldiers enduring the grim reality of Western Front trench warfare.