Free summaries
Adventure — page 17
833 public-domain adventure books, summarised. Page 17 of 18.
The Mad King
Edgar Rice Burroughs
In the volatile, mountainous kingdom of Lutha, a simple traveler from Nebraska is mistaken for the missing, long-imprisoned monarch, triggering a desperate struggle for the throne.
Sea Stories
Unknown
The sea has always served as the ultimate testing ground for human mettle, a vast and indifferent stage where the line between survival and oblivion is drawn by the shifting of a wind.
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A chance encounter between a desperate businessman and an eccentric scientist leads to the invention of a gravity-defying material and a voyage to a lunar world of terrifying, insect-like intelligence.
The Road to Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A girl from Kansas and a curious stranger embark on a whimsical trek through magical lands, guided by a mysterious horseshoe that compels every living thing they encounter to love them.
Brown of Moukden: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War
Herbert Strang
A young man navigates the perilous landscape of the Russo-Japanese War to rescue his father from a Siberian prison camp. It is a classic tale of endurance, resourcefulness, and the shifting loyalties of wartime.
The illustrated Tarzan book no. 1
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A refined English lord, orphaned in the African wilderness and raised by a tribe of great apes, must navigate the chasm between his savage upbringing and his true, hidden identity.
Tales of lonely trails
Zane Grey
The majesty of the American West serves as both a sanctuary and a mirror in these rugged, contemplative accounts of wilderness travel. It captures a vanishing frontier through the eyes of a man seeking clarity in the silence of the desert and mountain.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930
Various
This collection gathers five distinct tales of speculative invention, capturing the dawn of an era where scientific marvels—from invisibility and mind control to subatomic travel—threaten to outpace the moral readiness of humanity.
The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows
Joseph Conrad
A solitary, masterful sea captain finds his carefully ordered life of adventure and influence shattered when he becomes entangled with the occupants of a stranded luxury yacht.
The Royal Book of Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
The Scarecrow’s search for his family origins leads him to a distant, magical realm where he is mistaken for a long-lost royal figure. Alongside Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, he navigates a series of strange encounters in a quest to return home.
The Adventures of Gerard
Arthur Conan Doyle
The swaggering, irrepressible Brigadier Etienne Gerard recounts his most perilous exploits across the Napoleonic battlefields. These spirited tales capture the bravado of a soldier who believes his own myth as fervently as he serves his Emperor.
Abandoned
Jules Verne
Five men and a dog are cast away on an uncharted Pacific island, where they must rely on their ingenuity to master the wilderness. This tale of survival transforms a desolate rock into a thriving, self-sustaining society.
Camps and Trails in China: A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China
Roy Chapman Andrews
Amidst the political tremors of a crumbling empire, a small team of naturalists journeys into the remote, mountainous frontier of China to document the hidden life of its wild, vanishing forests.
The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West
Washington Irving
A U.S. Army captain trades his uniform for the wild life of a mountain trapper, navigating the perilous, vast, and untamed American West during the height of the fur trade.
The master mind of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A soldier from Earth finds himself an unwilling apprentice to a mad surgeon on Mars, where brains and bodies are swapped like spare parts in a grotesque, high-stakes game of survival.
Finished
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
A masterful weaver of African adventure brings a long-gestating saga to its harrowing conclusion, tracing the downfall of a kingdom through the eyes of a legendary hunter. This tale of revenge and imperial collapse blends historical tragedy with the supernatural.
A Yankee doctor in paradise
S. M. (Sylvester Maxwell) Lambert
A veteran physician navigates the islands of Oceania, fighting unseen parasites while grappling with the complex collision of ancient tribal traditions and modern colonial administration.
One of Clive's Heroes: A Story of the Fight for India
Herbert Strang
The winds of fortune blow hard across the Indian subcontinent, where a young man’s courage becomes the only currency that matters in the struggle between colonial ambition and ruthless treachery.
A Prisoner of the Khaleefa: Twelve Years Captivity at Omdurman
Charles Neufeld
A harrowing, first-hand account of twelve years spent in the brutal Omdurman prison, this narrative serves as both a testament to human endurance and a stark, unvarnished window into the fall of the Mahdist state.
Astounding Stories, April, 1931
Various
This periodical is a quintessential artifact of early 1930s pulp science fiction, delivering high-stakes adventures that prioritize rapid-fire action, cosmic peril, and the wonder of extraterrestrial discovery. It serves as a time capsule for an era when the boundaries of science were treated as vast, untapped…
The Junior Classics, Volume 5: Stories that never grow old
Unknown
This collection brings together legendary tales of survival, enchantment, and moral discovery, preserving the foundational narratives that have shaped the literary imagination for generations.
The Voyages of Captain Scott
Charles Turley
A haunting chronicle of human endurance, this account traces the final, tragic Antarctic journeys of a legendary explorer. It maps the thin line between scientific triumph and absolute, frozen isolation.
Death Valley in '49: Important chapter of California pioneer history. The autobiography of a pioneer, detailing his life from a humble home in the Green Mountains to the gold mines of California
William Lewis Manly
A harrowing, firsthand account of the 1849 California Gold Rush, tracking a young pioneer’s desperate survival through the uncharted, lethal heat of the valley that earned its name from his party’s ordeal.
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig": Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward
William Hope Hodgson
Stranded on a desolate, weed-choked sea, survivors of a shipwreck must defend themselves against nameless, nocturnal horrors while plotting a desperate escape from a forgotten corner of the world.
The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton
Daniel Defoe
A young man adrift in a lawless world carves his own destiny through desperate survival, improbable riches, and the quiet, persistent pull of conscience.
A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open
Theodore Roosevelt
A seasoned observer explores the world’s remaining wild corners, blending rugged adventure with a profound reverence for the natural history and human stories found in the open spaces of the Americas.
Hi Jolly!
Jim Kjelgaard
A solitary camel driver finds his destiny in the vast, unforgiving American Southwest. This narrative tracks an unlikely partnership between a man and his beast across two continents and a changing frontier.
The Motor Maid
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
HOOK A young woman unexpectedly finds herself working as a lady’s maid to a difficult employer while embarking on an adventurous automobile tour through the scenic heart of France.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930
Various
This collection of short stories and serialized novellas from July 1930 captures the high-velocity optimism and anxieties of early science fiction. It is a time capsule of an era when the genre was finding its footing through pulp magazines, blending rapid-fire technological speculation with the melodrama of the…
Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876
Ernest Giles
A relentless account of five expeditions into the arid heart of Australia, this record documents the harrowing struggle of a Victorian-era explorer to map a vast, unforgiving, and largely unknown interior.
Beau Brocade: A Romance
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
In the shadow of the Jacobite rebellions, a high-born brother and sister face ruin until a dashing, mysterious highwayman risks the gallows to secure their salvation. This tale of stolen letters, mistaken identities, and desperate courtships unfolds across the rugged, mist-shrouded moors of 18th-century Derbyshire.
Tarzan the Terrible
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan wanders into a hidden, prehistoric pocket of Africa, finding himself embroiled in the tribal politics and religious terrors of a lost civilization where men and beasts share the jungle. He must navigate the brutal landscape to rescue his wife, Lady Jane, who is held captive in a city of stone and sacrifice.
Taking Chances
Clarence Louis Cullen
These sketches capture the frantic, high-stakes world of turn-of-the-century gamblers, where fortune shifts on the turn of a card or the gallop of a horse.
The Three Voyages of William Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595, and 1596)
Gerrit de Veer
Stranded in the Arctic darkness of 1596, a Dutch crew builds a house of driftwood to survive the winter, marking a harrowing and singular chapter in the history of human endurance.
Sagas from the Far East
Unknown
The heart of these tales lies in the enduring human hunger for wonder, where ancient myths of the East travel across borders to transform into the wisdom of the steppes.
The Tree-Dwellers
Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
Survival in a world of giants requires more than just claws and teeth; it demands the slow, steady spark of human ingenuity.
Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country
Irving Bacheller
The story of a young boy and his rugged, devoted guardian journeying through the Adirondack wilderness, this book captures the transition from pioneer simplicity to the complex realities of American adulthood.
Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle
Theodore Roosevelt
The American frontier was once a vast, untamed theater of life and death, where the silence of the wilderness was broken only by the crack of a rifle and the primal struggles of beast against beast.
Mardi, and a voyage thither, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Herman Melville
A wanderer abandons his ship to pursue a lost, ethereal love through a sprawling, allegorical archipelago, seeking truth in a world that defies his grasp.
The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10): Stories from the Classics
Unknown
The ancient world is a place where gods walk among men, where hubris invites tragedy, and where every mortal journey is carved by the whims of fate. These timeless tales form the bedrock of Western storytelling.
Edison's Conquest of Mars
Garrett Putman Serviss
A devastated Earth, reeling from a murderous Martian invasion, unites behind Thomas Edison to construct an armada of electrical warships and carry a vengeful counterstroke directly to the Red Planet.
In the Eastern Seas
William Henry Giles Kingston
Tragedy strips two English orphans of everything they know, casting them onto the high seas where storms, shipwrecks, and uncharted islands test their endurance to the absolute limit.
Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
Separated from her uncle during a tempestuous storm at sea, Dorothy Gale washes ashore in the unfamiliar realm of Ev alongside an extraordinarily talkative hen named Billina.
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
Anonymous
A single story holds a tyrant’s blade at bay night after night as a doomed queen spins endless wonders to stay her execution.
King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure
Talbot Mundy
Behind the roaring rifles and shifting alliances of the Afghan frontier lies a quieter, deadlier game: a single British operative holding the line against a holy war through sheer nerve and a borrowed gold bracelet.
Treasure of Kings: Being the Story of the Discovery of the "Big Fish," or the Quest of the Greater Treasure of the Incas of Peru
Charles Gilson
A boy slips into the South Downs scrub to spy on three men and steps straight into a relentless chase for Inca gold that spans two continents.
The Rainbow Trail
Zane Grey
A man seeking a lost world finds the iron of the desert in his own blood.
The Young Lovell: A Romance
Ford Madox Ford
An northern knight breaks his vigil on the eve of his knighthood, lured away from the damp borderlands of England into a glittering realm of pagan magic, mortal warfare, and ghostly illusion.