The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 980
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 980 of 988.
The Little Gray Lady: 1909
Francis Hopkinson Smith
The Little Gray Lady is a delicate, atmospheric study of a woman who has spent twenty years mourning a lost love, only to find the past unexpectedly brought to life by the village youth. It is a quiet, sentimental exploration of memory and the redemptive power of a truth spoken in time.
The Religious Situation
Goldwin Smith
The traditional foundations of faith are eroding under the weight of modern inquiry, leaving humanity to navigate a world that no longer feels divinely orchestrated. This examination probes the widening gulf between ancient theological claims and the hard realities uncovered by science and historical criticism.
The Rise of the Dutch Republic
John Lothrop Motley
The abdication of a world-weary emperor marks the birth of a nation, setting the stage for a decades-long struggle for sovereignty and conscience. A sweeping historical narrative, this work traces the violent, transformative clash between the absolute power of the Spanish crown and the rising spirit of the Dutch…
A Word, Only a Word
Georg Ebers
A journey of artistic discovery and personal maturation set against the rigid, perilous backdrop of 16th-century Madrid, this novel follows a young man seeking his place in the world of painters. It is a story of craft, loyalty, and the pursuit of mastery.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 129, vol. III, June 19, 1886
Various
This collection of Victorian-era periodical writing captures the diverse curiosities, moral anxieties, and adventurous spirit of the late nineteenth century. Through a blend of essays, fiction, and poetry, it offers a window into the intellectual and social preoccupations of its time.
Dilemmas of Pride, (Vol 2 of 3)
Mrs. (Margracia) Loudon
The weight of expectation and the corrosiveness of social status entangle the lives of an aristocratic family, leading to a tragic, suspicion-filled climax. A quiet desperation defines those bound by the rigid hierarchies of their time.
Frank on a Gun-Boat
Harry Castlemon
The young hero of this story leaves behind the quiet comfort of his home, answering the call of duty to join the Union Navy during the most turbulent years of the American Civil War.
Hidden guns
Henry W. Patterson
A cabin trapped by record-breaking snow becomes a pressure cooker for two partners whose fraying nerves threaten to destroy them long before the outside world intervenes.
History of the United Netherlands, 1587c
John Lothrop Motley
This detailed chronicle examines a pivotal year in the struggle for Dutch independence, revealing how political paralysis and personal rivalries nearly cost a nation its hard-won liberty. It stands as a masterwork of nineteenth-century historical narrative, blending meticulous archival research with the tension of…
How to get a government position
Anonymous
This practical guide offers a window into the late 19th-century American dream of stability, detailing the precise bureaucratic steps required to secure a position within the expanding federal civil service.
In the Time That Was
James Frederic Thorne
This collection of Chilkat tribal legends preserves the oral history of an Alaskan people, capturing the voice of a traditional storyteller through the eyes of a traveler who finds kinship in the North. It is a bridge between two worlds, offering a window into the cosmology of a culture that defines its reality…
Magpie—diplomat
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Two wandering prospectors encounter three beleaguered city officials fleeing their wives, setting off a chain of elaborate lies and accidental chaos in a rough-and-tumble Western mining town.
No Defense, Volume 2
Gilbert Parker
A wrongly imprisoned nobleman escapes his fate by leading a mutinous ship into a decisive naval battle, seeking redemption for a crime he never committed.
Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee
England) Knaresbrough Rail-Way Committee (Knaresborough
A pragmatic proposal from 1819, this document charts the shift from canal dreams to the dawn of the railway era, seeking to revitalize a struggling Yorkshire textile district through modern engineering and iron tracks.
The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Book 55: Galatians: The Challoner Revision
Unknown
Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia serves as a passionate, urgent defense of Christian liberty against the creeping influence of rigid legalism. It remains a foundational text for those exploring the tension between personal faith and religious tradition.
The Chester and Holyhead Railway and Its Prospects
William Morgan
This account examines the engineering marvels and commercial potential of the mid-nineteenth-century railway line linking London to the Irish coast. It serves as both a technical tribute and a vigorous financial defense of a monumental infrastructure project.
The Cochineal
Anonymous
A simple household discovery of an insect becomes a profound meditation on faith. Through the lens of a microscope, a father and son find evidence of divine craftsmanship in the smallest corners of existence.
The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 13
Unknown
This journal captures the vibrant, idealistic heartbeat of the early Esperanto movement, serving as both a practical guide for learners and a manifesto for a universal linguistic brotherhood.
The Man in Lonely Land
Kate Langley Bosher
The gray, indifferent solitude of a wealthy New Yorker’s life is shattered by the arrival of a spirited woman from the Virginia countryside, forcing him to confront the emptiness he has long mistaken for independence.
The Man in the Reservoir
Charles Fenno Hoffman
Trapped at midnight in a towering municipal water tank, a reckless college student battles freezing depths, mocking stars, and thoughts of an indifferent sweetheart to cheat a grotesque drowning.
The Powder Monkey
George Manville Fenn
A young boy fleeing an abusive guardian finds a new home amidst the roar of cannons and the loyal heart of a grizzled sailor.
The Squire's young folk
Eleanora H. Stooke
The Squire's young folk is a gentle Victorian-era tale centering on a family of well-to-do children and their friendship with an orphan boy, highlighting how empathy and courage can overcome social divides and personal limitations during the Christmas season.
The Story of Bessie Costrell
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A tragedy of rural poverty, this narrative tracks the ruinous consequences of a single moment of weakness. It examines how a small, stolen inheritance unravels the lives of those caught in its wake.
A Broader Mission for Liberal Education: Baccalaureate Address, Delivered in Agricultural College Chapel, Sunday June 9, 1901
John H. (John Henry) Worst
The pursuit of knowledge should not distance a person from the realities of work; rather, a truly liberal education must bridge the divide between the hand and the mind to prepare citizens for a life of purposeful action.
A Temporary Dead-Lock: 1891
Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier
Separated by mislaid addresses, crossed wires, and their own comedic absent-mindedness, a Minneapolis rector and his devoted wife spend two agonizing days marooned directly across the street from one another in New York City.
Collectivum
Mike Lewis
HOOK In a world overrun by a hive-mind parasite, a man and a woman attempt to forge a resistance using the only weapon that can disrupt the collective: an alien form of empathy.
Inspiration: Its Nature and Extent
Edward Hoare
This work serves as a reasoned defense of the plenary, verbal, and infallible nature of biblical inspiration. It argues that the Bible is a divinely authored document that remains fully trustworthy despite its diverse human origins.
Pilgrims of the night
Edward Ernest Swanstrom
HOOK Millions of displaced people wander a shattered continent in the wake of total war. These are the forgotten, the dispossessed, and the suffering who embody the moral crisis of a broken mid-century world.
The Collaborators: 1896
Robert Hichens
The boundary between art and existence dissolves for two young writers whose collaborative novel begins to dictate the terms of their own reality. A haunting exploration of obsession, this narrative blurs the line between creation and catastrophe.
The Indian's Hand: 1892
Lorimer Stoddard
The frontier is a place of shadows and long-held grievances, where a mother’s hunger for retribution collides with the ghosts of her own history. In the harsh silence of the desert, the past is never truly buried.
Willie and Lucy abroad
Agnes Giberne
The young Gray siblings travel to Switzerland, where they encounter the majesty of the Alps and learn to reflect on the beauty of the natural world as a gift from their Creator.
Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes
Various
A collection of timeless verse, these rhymes capture the simple joys, rhythmic play, and occasional absurdities that have defined childhood for generations. They serve as a mirror to the domestic, natural, and whimsical world of the young.
A Word, Only a Word
Georg Ebers
Ambition and love collide in the heart of a soldier who discovers that the pursuit of power is a hollow path, while redemption waits in the quiet bonds of family and craft.
Count the Cost: An Address to the People of Connecticut, On Sundry Political Subjects, and Particularly on the Proposition for a New Constitution
David Daggett
Before pulling up a flourishing hill of corn to search for worms, a prudent farmer must pause to consider if the act might destroy the crop entirely. This central warning serves as the cornerstone for a rigorous defense of Connecticut’s established political order during a period of intense revolutionary fervor.
Country Lodgings
Mary Russell Mitford
A young widow and a mysterious foreign exile find romance in a crumbling country manor, testing the boundaries of social status, personal sacrifice, and the true nature of love.
Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk
Gilbert Parker
The South Pacific serves as both a stage for imperial ambition and a mirror for the human soul in this collection of colonial-era tales. These stories explore the fragile boundary between civilization and the wild, often with a wry, melancholic detachment.
Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt
Gilbert Parker
This collection of interconnected tales captures the volatile intersection of British administrative ambition and the ancient, enduring rhythms of life along the Nile. It offers a vivid, often somber window into a world of colonial duty, local intrigue, and personal sacrifice.
Egocentric Orbit
John Cory
Alone in the void, a pilot discovers that the ultimate mastery of space flight does not lead to scientific triumph, but to a profound and irreversible rupture with the human world below.
G-r-r-r...!
Robert Donald Locke
A petty Spanish monk turns to forbidden magic to destroy his hated rival, only to discover too late the devastating cost of a misspelled Latin spell.
Hunted Down
Harry Granice
A young man in nineteenth-century California shoots his mother's defamer, then flees a corrupt sheriff and a bloodthirsty mob through five days of freezing valley fog.
Lives of the queens of Scotland and English princesses connected with the regal succession of Great Britain, vol. 1
Agnes Strickland
This collection of royal biographies uncovers the turbulent lives of women bound by the heavy, often tragic, demands of the Scottish crown. It offers an intimate, meticulously researched window into a world of shifting alliances and the personal costs of dynastic duty.
Michael McGrath, Postmaster
Ralph Connor
The frontier is rarely a place for nostalgia, yet here, a retired soldier turns a remote Canadian cabin into a bastion of imperial pride, clinging to a fading past through his garden, his flag, and his mail.
"Nothing Between": The Special Doctrines Vindicated at the Reformation as Bearing upon the Spiritual Life of the Church
Edward Hoare
The Reformation’s theological legacy is not merely a historical record of discord, but a path to immediate spiritual intimacy, clearing away every obstacle between the individual soul and the Divine.
Precedents in Piperock
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A wild Fourth of July in an imaginary Montana town spirals into chaos when a "safe and sane" celebration accidentally launches a local resident into the clouds via a runaway hot air balloon.
The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864: A statement of the erroneous claims made by General Schofield, and an exposition of the blunder which opened the battle
John K. Shellenberger
The Battle of Franklin was a catastrophic failure of command disguised as a tactical masterpiece, and this account strips away the long-standing myths surrounding its leadership.
The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Book 34: Joel: The Challoner Revision
Unknown
The locusts arrive as a harbinger of divine judgment, stripping the land bare and forcing a chosen people to confront their own spiritual fragility. Through ruin, a promise of restoration and future grace emerges.
The Bride of the Nile
Georg Ebers
A noble household in seventh-century Egypt unravels under the pressure of religious conflict, hidden passions, and a stolen jewel that threatens to shatter a family’s fragile honor.
The Esperantist, Vol. 2, No. 3
Unknown
This publication serves as a window into the organized enthusiasm of the early Esperanto movement, capturing the language at a moment of global growth and intellectual optimism. It functions as both a community chronicle and a practical handbook for those building an international culture from the ground up.