The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 850
44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 850 of 920.

Cessions of Land by Indian Tribes to the United States: Illustrated by Those in the State of Indiana: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 247-262
Charles C. Royce
This report documents the relentless, systematic acquisition of territory from indigenous nations by the United States, illustrating the legal and geographic mechanics that erased tribal land tenure across the state of Indiana.

Cinq Mars
Alfred de Vigny
A young nobleman rises to prominence in the treacherous court of Louis XIII, only to find himself entangled in a fatal struggle against the absolute, cold-blooded power of Cardinal Richelieu.

Clover and Blue Grass
Eliza Calvert Hall
A rural Kentucky community moves through small crises and quiet awakenings, where local gossip, traditional pride, and unvarnished Christian charity reshape the everyday lives of ordinary neighbors.

Coffin for two
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
HOOK A returning space explorer finds his home planet transformed by a chilling technology: humans now live in coffins, delegating their existence to synthetic remote-controlled bodies.

Collected works of Padraic H. Pearse
Padraic Pearse
This collection gathers the imaginative legacy of a foundational figure in Irish revolutionary history, blending spare, evocative prose with verse that pulses with a singular, sacrificial intensity. It serves as both a literary artifact of the Irish Literary Revival and a deeply personal testament to a life lived…

Crowded Out o' Crofield
William O. Stoddard
HOOK A determined boy leaves his small-town life behind to conquer the bustling opportunities of the city. He discovers that ambition, when paired with integrity, can turn even the most unlikely beginnings into a life of success.

Dawningsburgh
Wallace West
A lonely woman seeking romance on a dying world finds herself trapped in a cosmic prank when she encounters the true inhabitant of a synthetic tourist trap.

Derelicts of Uranus
J. Harvey (John Harvey) Haggard
This is a story of three desperate souls trapped by the crushing atmosphere and soul-sapping lethargy of a mud-drenched world, struggling against both their environment and each other.

Dialogue between John and Thomas, on the Corn Laws, the Charter, Teetotalism, and the Probable Remedy for the Present Disstresses
Unknown
Two working-class men debate the causes of their country’s economic collapse, searching for a remedy that might lift them from the widespread destitution of the early 1840s.

Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697)
Samuel Wesley
Can a Christian poet abandon classical myths, embrace sacred truth, and construct an enduring epic around the life of Jesus Christ?

Fleurs De Lys, and Other Poems
Arthur Weir
From the high-walled fortress of Quebec to the lonely pine couches of wilderness hunters, this 1887 collection captures the rugged, romantic spirit of early Canada through vivid historical ballads and intimate personal verse.

Formula for murder
Milton A. Rothman
The secret to committing the perfect murder lies not just in the act itself, but in the psychological manipulation required to ensure that the perpetrator is seen as a victim in need of a cure.

Harper's Young People, January 17, 1882: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic window into the late Victorian era, offering young readers a blend of moral instruction, historical curiosity, and simple, earnest entertainment.

Harry Muir
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A young man inherits a grand Scottish estate, only to discover that sudden wealth is a fragile, demanding burden that threatens to undo his family's peace.

Heathen Master Filcsik
Kálmán Mikszáth
A stubborn, isolated cobbler clings to a threadbare, embroidered fur cloak as the only object of his affection, until a final, silent encounter with his dying daughter forces a transformation that defies his reputation.

Historic Court Memoirs of France: An Index
Various
This collection offers a sweeping, multi-generational tour of French power, capturing the intimate scandals and grand political shifts that defined the nation’s royal history. It serves as an essential, sprawling record of a vanishing world.

Historical Record of the Fifty-sixth, or the West Essex Regiment of Foot: Containing an account of the formation of the regiment in 1755, and of its subsequent services to 1844
Richard Cannon
This formal chronicle documents the operational life of a storied British infantry unit, tracing its deployments, battles, and internal administration from its mid-eighteenth-century founding through the mid-nineteenth century.

How to Settle Accounts with your Laundress: An Original Farce, in One Act
J. Stirling (Joseph Stirling) Coyne
A tailor’s romantic aspirations are hilariously derailed when his jilted laundress stages a mock suicide, leading to a night of mistaken identities, terrified confessions, and a very crowded supper.

Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World Verses
Madison Julius Cawein
These verses capture the elegiac spirit of a fading nineteenth-century world, where nature and memory collide in tales of tragic love and historical longing.

Island Trail at Walnut Canyon: Walnut Canyon National Monument
Southwestern Monuments Association
This guide offers an immersive, site-specific walk through the ancient cliff dwellings of Walnut Canyon, blending geological history with the daily realities of the people who once called the canyon home. It serves as both a literal map and a cultural window into a vanished way of life.

Jungle in the Sky
Stephen Marlowe
The Solar System has become a dangerous frontier where human ambition faces alien horrors, and a young man discovers that surviving the hunt requires more than just professional expertise.

Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator
Nelson S. Bond
A gifted but clumsy navigator uses a pocket in space to pull off an impossible shortcut. This collection of linked stories follows his chaotic, inventive life aboard a struggling cargo ship.

Lost over Greenland
Richard H. Stone
A young aviator faces the treacherous Arctic, battling sub-zero survival and the mystery of a missing hero in a high-stakes search through the frozen North.

May Day with the Muses
Robert Bloomfield
HOOK An elderly gentleman invites his tenants to pay their half-year’s rent not with gold, but with original songs and stories, sparking a vibrant day of communal celebration, music, and storytelling on his estate.

Memoirs of a country doll. Written by herself
Mary Curtis
The life of a doll is a precarious one, filled with the shifting affections of children, the perils of the household, and the constant threat of being broken or discarded. This charming, earnest narrative captures the world of Victorian childhood through the eyes of its most observant inhabitant.

Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Montespan
Madame de Montespan
A sharp-tongued aristocrat recounts the fading splendor of her reign at the court of Louis XIV, documenting the relentless rise of her rival and the intricate, often cruel, mechanics of royal favor.

Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud (Being secret letters from a gentleman at Paris to a nobleman in London)
Lewis Goldsmith
This collection of clandestine missives offers a jagged, intimate, and deeply cynical window into the inner workings of Napoleon’s early Imperial court. It functions as an essential, if biased, corrective to official histories of the Consulate and the dawn of the First Empire.

Mufti
H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
This postwar exploration of the "lost generation" captures the profound disorientation of returning to a civilian world that no longer fits the men who survived the trenches.

Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Paul Cuffe, a Pequot Indian, During Thirty Years Spent at Sea, and in Travelling in Foreign Lands
Paul Cuffe
This account follows a mariner through three decades of high-seas adventure, capturing the relentless rhythm of the nineteenth-century whaling industry and the precarious existence of a traveler caught in the crosscurrents of global conflict.

Navajo National Monument, Arizona (1951)
United States. National Park Service
The remnants of the ancient Anasazi civilization stand as silent, stone sentinels within the canyons of northeastern Arizona. This account chronicles the discovery and preservation of these remarkable cliff dwellings.

No Hero
E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
A veteran tasked with sabotaging a younger man’s infatuation finds himself trapped in a web of his own making, where the line between duty and desire vanishes in the thin, crystalline air of the Alps.

Notes and Queries, Number 36, July 6, 1850
Various
This periodical serves as a mid-nineteenth-century clearinghouse for the curious, a collaborative forum where Victorian scholars, antiquarians, and readers exchange obscure facts, solve literary puzzles, and document vanishing traditions.

Notes on the Mammals of Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties, Michigan, 1920: Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, Number 109
Lee R. (Lee Raymond) Dice
In the summer of 1920, two field zoologists surveyed the dense woods and waterways of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to document every mammal in its native habitat.

On the Pampas
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
A family leaves behind the crowded prospects of England to forge a new life in the vast, untamed wilderness of the Argentine pampas. Amidst the challenges of the frontier, they transform their struggle for survival into a lasting legacy of prosperity.

On the red staircase
Mary Imlay Taylor
A stranger in a land of shifting loyalties, a French nobleman risks his life to navigate the treacherous intrigues of the Russian court and rescue a young woman from a forced, loveless marriage.

On trail and rapid by dog-sled & canoe
H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
The frozen wilderness of the Canadian North serves as the backdrop for this account of a man who traded comfort for a life of isolation, hardship, and tireless service among remote indigenous populations.

Partners of the tide
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
A young orphan finds his true calling among the rugged coastlines and hard-earned lessons of Cape Cod. This story captures the grit of maritime life through the eyes of a boy coming of age.

Pegeen
Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd
A solitary painter’s retreat is interrupted by a small, irrepressible girl who decides he needs "seeing to." This gentle story explores the healing power of community and the quiet, profound connections that form in a New England valley.

Poems
Edward Thomas
HOOK These verses capture the quiet, persistent pulse of the English landscape on the eve of a world-altering war, seeking beauty in the mud, the rain, and the transience of human life.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105, August 19th 1893
Various
A snapshot of Victorian society at play and in power, caught mid-stride in the late summer of 1893.

Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914
Various
This collection captures the biting, defiant humor of a nation deep in the throes of the First World War. It remains a poignant record of how a society preserves its wit when faced with existential dread.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, April 4, 1891
Various
A biting Victorian satire targeting the fleeting crazes, institutional hypocrisies, and social anxieties of late nineteenth-century London.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, Jan. 1, 1919
Various
This collection captures the peculiar, weary, and dry-witted atmosphere of London at the dawn of 1919, as a society pivots from the Great War toward an uncertain peace. It offers a candid look at the British spirit during a moment of profound national transition.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, July 23, 1887
Various
A Victorian weekly snapshot of the political and social atmosphere, this collection captures the biting wit and satirical energy of 1887 London. It serves as an essential, if opinionated, lens into the era’s public discourse.

Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 03, April 16, 1870
Various
This weekly periodical serves as a vibrant, satirical mirror to the American social and political landscape of 1870, blending sharp-witted commentary with the era’s distinct obsession with commerce, technology, and cultural pretension.

Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry: A Collection of Curious Poetical Compositions of the XVIth, XVIIth, and XVIIIth Centuries
Edmund Goldsmid
This collection offers a rare glimpse into the literary scrapbooks of the past, preserving ephemeral verses that would otherwise have vanished into the dust of private archives and forgotten auction lots. It serves as a bridge to a bygone era of English expression, where political grievances, romantic longings, and…

Remarks on the production of the precious metals: and on the demonetization of gold in several countries in Europe
Léon Faucher
An exploration of the global gold rushes of the mid-nineteenth century, this work examines whether a sudden surge in precious metals would inevitably devalue currency and destabilize the international economy.

Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2
George S. (George Sewall) Boutwell
The life of a statesman is a long conversation with history, and these reflections offer a front-row seat to the turbulent decades that forged the modern American Republic.