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44,127 public-domain books, summarised. Page 863 of 920.

The Camp Fire Girls
Howard Roger Garis
A group of spirited young women embarks on a summer camping trip, only to find themselves entangled in a series of mysterious events involving a local legend, a missing ring, and a long-abandoned mill.

The Captain's Bunk: A Story for Boys
M. B. Manwell
Two willful boys flee their coastal home for a grand adventure, only to discover the crushing reality of forced labor in a traveling London circus before redemption brings them home.

The Doctor's Family
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A fiercely independent young woman sacrifices her own future to care for a shiftless family, discovering that true devotion is often a heavy and thankless burden.

The Dream-God, or, A Singular Evolvement of Thought in Sleep
John Cuningham
A bedridden man’s morphine-induced sleep unlocks a celestial voyage, as a winged spirit guides him across the globe to debate the nature of power, faith, and the destiny of nations.

The Drummer's Coat
Fortescue, J. W. (John William), Sir
In a quiet Devonshire valley, a lost pair of children and a veteran soldier’s memento bridge the gap between a sheltered gentry upbringing and the harsh, hidden realities of those scarred by the Napoleonic Wars.

The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act: An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts, Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9
Lydia Maria Child
The truth of heaven is often committed to voices deemed feeble, and such a voice here demands an end to the moral compromise of a state acting as a handmaid to human bondage.

The Fiery Totem: A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West
C. F. Argyll Saxby
Across the vast, untamed expanse of the Canadian North-West, two fathers and their teenage sons are separated by a series of accidents, only to find themselves entangled in the dangerous superstitions of a local tribe.

The Flutter of the Goldleaf, and Other Plays
Olive Tilford Dargan
An ambitious vision of human potential unites these four brief, ideas-driven plays. Though varied in setting—from a cold New England attic to a lotus-scented Chinese garden, a symbolic dreamscape, and an ancient Greek courtyard—the collection consistently pits visionary thinkers against a world bound by material…

The Geisha Memory
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
HOOK A public relations operative travels to the Martian mining frontier to investigate a scandalous song, only to discover the desperate, humanizing secret behind the red planet’s strictly enforced segregation.

The Glacier Gate: An Adventure Story
Frank Lillie Pollock
A disgraced surgeon pursues a desperate path toward redemption and discovery, finding his true worth in the frozen, unforgiving wilderness of the far south.

The God in the Box
Sewell Peaslee Wright
The silence of a long-dead explorer, preserved in a simple metal box, becomes the divine voice of a world waiting for its salvation. A routine patrol turns into a journey through time and human legacy.

The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 24, April 22, 1897: A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls
Various
This weekly chronicle brings the late nineteenth-century world into sharp focus, offering young readers a guided tour of international politics, technological marvels, and the shifting geography of an expanding empire.

The Hawthorns: A Story about Children
Amy Walton
The Hawthorns is a gentle, immersive chronicle of five siblings growing up in a country vicarage, where the small, imaginative dramas of childhood are treated with deep respect and warmth. It captures the quiet, vivid intensity of a world bounded by a pear tree, a garden, and the constant, burgeoning curiosity of…

The Hoofs of Pegasus
Letitia Stockett
A collection of verses that finds the sacred in the mundane, these poems capture the tension between a quiet, domestic life and a spirit that longs to roam with the wilder forces of the earth.

The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 37, March 13, 1841
Various
A Victorian miscellany weaves Irish history, folklore, and moral philosophy into a weekly guide for the common reader, aiming to bridge the gap between high-minded discourse and everyday life.

The Land of Nome: A narrative sketch of the rush to our Bering Sea gold-fields, the country, its mines and its people, and the history of a great conspiracy (1900-1901)
Lanier McKee
This firsthand account captures the raw, chaotic energy of the 1900 Alaska gold rush, detailing both the physical hardships of the frontier and the brazen corruption that nearly crippled the Nome mining district.

The Life of Mr. Richard Savage: Who was Condemn'd with Mr. James Gregory, the last Sessions at the Old Baily, for the Murder of Mr. James Sinclair, at Robinson's Coffee-house at Charing-Cross
Unknown
A bastardized son of the nobility spends his youth cast off by his wealthy mother, turns to writing plays for bread, and suddenly finds himself sentenced to hang for a midnight tavern brawl.

The luck of San Miguel
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The dusty trails of the Arizona range hide secrets that only a sharp eye can uncover. When the law fails to see the truth, two drifting cowboys arrive to settle the score.

The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1
Hurlothrumbo
A tavern window scratched with a diamond ring captures the fleeting wit, romantic longings, and earthy humor of eighteenth-century England.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 275, September 29, 1827
Various
This collection gathers the curiosities, maritime terrors, and domestic philosophies of 1827. It serves as a window into a vanished world where engineering marvels, travelogues, and romantic ideals converged for the curious public.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 535, February 25, 1832
Various
This collection offers a vibrant window into the intellectual life of 1832, blending natural history, historical reflection, and personal narrative into an engaging survey of the era's curiosities.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 538, March 17, 1832
Various
A mosaic of historical curiosity and social observation, this nineteenth-century periodical captures the intellectual temperament of an era through a diverse collection of tales, technical reports, and poetic reflections.

The Motor Rangers on Blue Water
John Henry Goldfrap
The Motor Rangers, a trio of intrepid young friends, find their coastal peace shattered when they become ensnared in the desperate, treasure-seeking schemes of a criminal gang. They must navigate a treacherous Pacific voyage to survive.

The Nomad of the Nine Lives
A. Frances (Abby Frances) Friebe
A feline memoirist recounts a lifetime of narrow escapes, high-society comforts, and the harrowing reality of abandonment, serving as a poignant plea for the humane treatment of domestic animals.

The Nursery, Number 164: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
Various
This monthly periodical serves as a time capsule of late 19th-century American childhood, offering a collection of moralizing fables, simple poetry, and instructive prose designed to shape the character and curiosity of the youngest readers.

The Philistine
Various
A defiant, self-styled "periodical of protest," this collection captures the biting wit, literary posturing, and contrarian spirit of the late nineteenth-century American intellectual underground.

The Players
Everett B. Cole
A bored elite turns a primitive world into a board game, until two local recruits in a galactic peace corps decide to dismantle the board.

The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The wisdom of age, the endurance of memory, and the quiet dignity of a life spent in service define these reflections from a master of the nineteenth-century American literary tradition.

The Regular Brigade of the Fourteenth Army Corps, the Army of the Cumberland, in the Battle of Stone River, or Murfreesboro', Tennessee
Frederick Phisterer
A precise, unvarnished account of how a single brigade of professional soldiers stood against the tide of battle to anchor a crumbling flank at Stone River.

The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears
Keith Bennett
This is a spare, gritty chronicle of survival that strips away the glamour of space exploration to reveal the brutal reality of an uncharted world. It captures the psychological toll of isolation, the thin veneer of military discipline, and the sheer, exhausting absurdity of trying to categorize a hostile, alien…

The Roses of Saint Elizabeth
Jane Scott Woodruff
A young girl and her friend discover that the ancient ivy of the Wartburg castle speaks, sending the boy on a lifelong quest for the world’s greatest treasure.

The Sapphire Cross
George Manville Fenn
The Fen-land, with its whispering pines and marshy silences, holds the echoes of an old, unresolved sorrow. Through the mist of the past, two families find their fates bound by a forgotten scandal and the enduring, fragile hope of a new generation.

The Secret of Wyvern Towers
T. W. (Thomas Wilkinson) Speight
HOOK A man confesses to a crime he did not commit, setting in motion a dark, atmospheric investigation into a long-buried death at a crumbling English estate.

The Seven Plaits of Nettles, and other stories
Edric Vredenburg
A collection of gentle fables where the humble and the kind find miraculous rewards, proving that even a small act of grace can mend a broken kingdom.

The Sheriffs Bluff: 1908
Thomas Nelson Page
A lighthearted Southern politician meets his match in a stern, principled woman, proving that even a master of the bluff can be outplayed when his past antics finally come due.

The Sign at Six
Stewart Edward White
When a mysterious, invisible force begins to paralyze New York City with targeted terror, a cynical scientist must outmaneuver both a desperate political boss and a brilliant, cold-blooded rival to stop a catastrophe.

The Star Beast
Damon Knight
A brutal murder on a starship threatens the future of humanity, but the only witness is an inscrutable alien creature that communicates in mysteries. This tense science fiction puzzle explores the terrifying fragility of the human mind when confronted with the truly extraterrestrial.

The tale of Sandy Chipmunk
Arthur Scott Bailey
The story of a hyperactive, opportunistic, and plucky little creature who navigates the perils of Pleasant Valley with a mixture of curiosity and unearned confidence.

The Thing of Venus
Wilbur S. Peacock
A disgraced officer finds redemption on a deadly water world, but saving the woman he once loved forces him to confront the bitter wreckage of his own life.

The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
Louis Bernheimer
This is a sober, clinical dissection of the 1921 murder trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, written as a final appeal for justice while the men awaited execution. It strips away the political hysteria of the era to examine the specific evidentiary failures that led to their conviction.

The Unknown Wrestler
H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
A disillusioned clergyman sheds his robes to labor among the poor, only to find that true salvation requires a fight for justice and a heart open to love.**

The Vilbar Party
Evelyn E. Smith
A grumpy, scholarly alien expects to endure a year of hostile isolation on Earth, only to discover that being perceived as a cuddly curiosity is a far more exhausting burden.

The Wandering Jew
Eugène Sue
The Wandering Jew is a sprawling, atmospheric melodrama of the 1840s that pits a vast, clandestine conspiracy against the fragile hopes of a noble, scattered family. It captures the frantic, volatile pulse of a society caught between ancient religious power and the stirrings of a new, industrial age.

The White Road to Verdun
Kathleen Burke
The White Road to Verdun is an intimate, observational account of life during the Great War, capturing the indomitable spirit of the French military and civilian population through the eyes of a sympathetic visitor. It offers a rare, ground-level perspective on the resilience of those sustaining the war effort in…

The X Bar X boys at Nugget Camp
James Cody Ferris
Two young brothers navigate the dangers of the American frontier, trading ranch life for the high-stakes, lawless scramble of a gold-rush mining camp.

The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. I, No. 4, June 1836)
Various
This collection of student writing captures the intellectual anxieties, literary ambitions, and romantic sensibilities of mid-19th-century Yale, offering an unfiltered look at a vanished collegiate world.

The Young Carpenters of Freiberg: A Tale of the Thirty Years' War
Anonymous
A child dies in an isolated mill, caught between warring soldiers, while an honest apprentice carries a dangerous secret past the town gates. Outside the walls of Freiberg, an army waits to destroy everything inside.

Three Sioux Scouts
Elmer Russell Gregor
Three young Sioux warriors navigate the perilous, shifting alliances of the Great Plains, risking their lives to rescue an abducted chief and restore honor to their kin.