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44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 856 of 920.

Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
This issue captures the texture of late nineteenth-century American childhood through a mix of moral verse, instructional prose, serialized sea adventure, history, and active reader correspondence.

Harry Muir
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
The life of Harry Muir is a cautionary tale of a man undone by his own impulsiveness, observed through the eyes of the women who love him and the shadow he casts upon their lives.

Hendricks the Hunter
William Henry Giles Kingston
An Irish family fortified on the Zululand border, a missing child raised among strangers, and two warring princes shape this classic African frontier adventure.

How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas
W. H. H. (William Henry Harrison) Murray
A wilderness trapper, guided by his reading of scripture, sets out on a snowy Christmas Eve to bring hope and sustenance to a family facing starvation.

How the Bible was Invented: A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society
M. M. (Mangasar Mugurditch) Mangasarian
This critical lecture challenges the assumption of divine authorship, proposing instead that the Bible is a human product shaped by centuries of political maneuvering, pious fraud, and cultural invention.

In the Rocky Mountains
William Henry Giles Kingston
A tale of resilience in the American West, this adventure follows orphaned siblings and their kin as they navigate the perils of a harsh frontier. It is a classic survival story defined by the steady, unyielding spirit of its young protagonists.

Indian Games
Andrew McFarland Davis
Beyond the frantic pace of competition lies a world where games are not merely pastimes, but bridges to the spirit, tools for healing, and high-stakes arenas for community survival.

Into the Sun
John L. (John Leslie) Chapman
A crew of four, crippled by a mid-space accident, drifts helplessly toward the sun. As their ship becomes a furnace, the struggle to survive turns into a grim exploration of duty, cowardice, and the value of scientific legacy.

Invaders of the Forbidden Moon
Raymond Z. (Raymond Zinke) Gallun
HOOK A patrol pilot and an idealistic scientist venture into the lethal, energy-shielded depths of Jupiter’s Forbidden Moon to unlock a cache of ancient, god-like technology before a ruthless opportunist seizes it.

Ioläus: The man that was a ghost
James Allan Mackereth
The soul is a lonely voyager on a vast, shifting sea of existence, seeking a home that is always just beyond the horizon. This collection of verse explores the ache of human isolation and the persistent, haunting beauty of a world that promises everything yet remains forever out of reach.

Items on the Priesthood, presented to the Latter-day Saints
John Taylor
This theological treatise clarifies the hierarchy, duties, and scriptural foundations of the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods within the Latter-day Saint tradition, providing a structured guide for the faithful.

Jack Straw in Mexico: How the Engineers Defended the Great Hydro-Electric Plant
Irving Crump
A young Vermont student undertakes a perilous mission to deliver secret engineering blueprints to a remote hydro-electric plant during the height of the Mexican Revolution.

Kwan-yin
Stella Benson
A golden face stares into the smoke of incense, offering a silence that eventually shatters under the weight of human suffering. This dramatic work captures the agonizing disconnect between desperate faith and the reality of an indifferent universe.

Lady Bell, volume 2 (of 3)
Sarah Tytler
A young widow finds herself navigating the social minefields of the eighteenth century, balancing the rigid expectations of her rank against the stirrings of an unexpected and unconventional love.

Lectures on ancient ethnography and geography, volume 1 (of 2)
Barthold Georg Niebuhr
The ancient world emerges as a living landscape, where the shifting borders of empires and the physical contours of the earth dictate the fortunes of the civilizations that rose and fell upon its soil.

Letters to His Son, 1766-71: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
These intimate, late-life letters reveal a weary aristocrat mentoring his son, only to face the profound, silent heartbreak of a life lived in the shadow of unspoken secrets.

Little Dog Ready: How He Lost Himself in the Big World
Mabel F. Stryker
HOOK A devoted, shaggy-coated dog wanders into the wide world, braving strange dangers and long roads, driven only by the desperate hope of reuniting with his sick young master.

Lloyd George: The Man and His Story
Frank Dilnot
A whirlwind of political ambition and relentless energy, this portrait captures the ascent of a small-town boy who dared to challenge the British establishment and ultimately command the nation during its hour of greatest peril.

Lucius Davoren
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
A physician, bound by memory and music, navigates the fragile boundaries of professional duty and the haunting secrets of the men he treats. This Victorian drama explores how the scars of a frozen wilderness echo in the refined, domestic tensions of English life.

Ludvig Holberg, The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student
S. C. (Simon Christian) Hammer
A brilliant young Scandinavian scholar absorbs the intellectual freedom of Enlightenment Britain and returns to transform the literature of his homeland.

Made in Tanganyika
Carl Jacobi
A man’s obsession with a mysterious television set leads him into a reality-bending nightmare, where the boundary between collector and collection dissolves into a trap of his own making.

Miss Theodora: A West End Story
Helen Leah Reed
A quiet Boston neighborhood yields to the modern world as a devoted woman chooses family duty over her own happiness, only to find a late-in-life renewal far from home.

More Seeds of Knowledge
Miss (Julia) Corner
Education shapes a young boy's worldview as he explores geography, history, and moral questions with his parents through lively household conversations and London outings.

My Fair Planet
Evelyn E. Smith
The stage is set for a cosmic performance where the distinction between acting and reality blurs. A failing theater star finds himself tasked with an impossible directing job: teaching an extraterrestrial how to be human.

My First Cruise, and Other stories
William Henry Giles Kingston
A young sailor’s first voyage and a collection of tales featuring magical gates, mythical beasts, and quiet farm life offer a window into nineteenth-century adventure. These stories capture the thrill of discovery and the steady persistence of faith.

My Memory of Gladstone
Goldwin Smith
A man of immense energy and contradiction, this towering political figure is examined through the lens of a contemporary observer who witnessed his rise, his mastery, and his eventual, divisive decline.

"My Novel"
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A quiet village serves as the stage for a sprawling, multi-generational exploration of ambition, class, and the enduring power of family secrets. It captures the tension between the restless drive for worldly success and the tempering influence of home, wisdom, and the heart.

My sweetheart's the Man in the Moon
Stephen Marlowe
The first human to set foot on the moon becomes a national sensation, yet the true cost of his fame is measured in the quiet, desperate life of his fiancée, left behind to navigate a world of predatory exploitation.

New York Nocturnes, and Other Poems
Roberts, Charles G. D., Sir
A collection of lyrical meditations that contrast the relentless, mechanical roar of the Victorian city with the quiet, persistent pull of nature and memory.

Odd Man Out: Sailor's Knots, Part 6
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
Friendship is a precarious business, often dismantled by the most trivial of complications. In this droll tale of inseparable companions and the women who weave their way into their lives, the bonds of brotherhood face a humorous, relentless test.

Old Mr. Wiley
Greye La Spina
A fading family’s legacy hinges on the spectral intervention of a long-dead ancestor, who returns to save his sickly descendant from a cold, uncaring home.

Poems of life
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
This collection of verse captures the restless, yearning spirit of a soul caught between the heights of youthful idealism and the sober weight of life’s inevitable sorrows. It is a work of candid introspection, written with a rhythmic vitality that seeks to translate the complexities of human emotion into clear,…

Possession: A Peep-Show in Paradise
Laurence Housman
Death brings no relief to the small-minded, as three sisters reunite in a Victorian afterlife to resume their petty squabbles over tea-pots, furniture, and family grievances.

Proteus
Vernon Lee
The shifting, multifaceted nature of reality demands a nimble, skeptical, and ever-evolving mind. This exploration of the future of intelligence argues that progress relies not on rigid dogmas, but on our ability to witness and adapt to change.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916
Various
War transforms the ordinary rhythms of daily life into an absurd, tedious, and profoundly human struggle for endurance.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, August 14, 1841
Various
A biting, satirical mirror held up to the Victorian establishment, this collection captures the irreverent spirit of 1841 London through sharp prose, whimsical verse, and merciless mockery of the powerful.

Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892
Various
A panoramic look at late-Victorian British society, capturing the anxieties, hypocrisies, and absurdities of a nation caught between tradition and modern friction.

Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870
Various
A satirical weekly from post-Civil War New York, this periodical captures the raucous, biting, and opportunistic spirit of 1870s American journalism through a lens of relentless mockery.

Quotations from John L. Motley Works
John Lothrop Motley
These collected entries offer a sweeping, aphoristic look at the birth of the Dutch Republic and the turbulent era of European religious warfare. They capture the cynical machinations of monarchs and the desperate, often bloody, struggle for national autonomy.

Seeing the Elephant
George M. (George Melville) Baker
A reformed city man uses a clever ruse involving a fake elephant to shock his future father-in-law into sobriety.

Seeking his fortune, and other dialogues
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A young man leaves the country for the promise of the city, only to discover that the road to success is paved with more than just good intentions. This collection of short, dramatic sketches explores the trials and absurdities of nineteenth-century life.

Silver Rags
Willis Boyd Allen
HOOK When a young girl’s gold watch vanishes, a summer of lighthearted mountain exploration turns into a tense hunt for the truth, revealing the hidden depths of character beneath the surface of a Maine vacation.

Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A quiet winter storm transforms a small New England town, calling forth deep reflections on human mortality, artistic creation, and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.

Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus
Violet Jacob
The hills of Angus hold their secrets in a language that remembers what the modern world has forgotten, offering a bridge between the quiet endurance of home and the distant, aching spaces of the soul.

Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law: Before Judge Drummond, Of The United States District Court, Chicago, Ill
John Hossack
This impassioned courtroom address captures the defiant stance of an immigrant farmer who risked his life and livelihood to uphold the dictates of his conscience against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Stock and stalks
James Russel Roberts
A practical, no-nonsense guide to the dairy industry, this volume offers a bridge between laboratory science and the gritty, profit-driven reality of the farm. It is a candid look at the daily labor of milk production, written by a businessman who believes that the secret to success lies in careful management…

Taxonomy and Distribution of Some American Shrews
James S. (James Smith) Findley
This focused scientific monograph examines the classification and geographic range of various North American shrews, clarifying their biological relationships through precise physical measurement and comparative analysis.

That Awful Letter: A Comedy for Girls
Edna I. MacKenzie
A city snob attempts to scare off a country cousin with a cruel letter, only to find the cousin is a brilliant actress who has planned a retaliatory performance of her own.