Free summaries
Adventure — page 2
211 public-domain adventure books, summarised. Page 2 of 5.
The Travels of Marco Polo
Marco Polo
A life spent wandering brings the world into sharp focus; once you have seen the cities of men and touched the edges of the map, you can never truly return to who you were before.
The three musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
Young D’Artagnan arrives in Paris with little more than a hot temper and a letter of introduction, only to find himself entangled in a web of statecraft, secret romances, and high-stakes espionage. He quickly discovers that in the court of Louis XIII, a sharp sword is often less useful than a sharp mind.
One Wonderful Night: A Romance of New York
Louis Tracy
This is the story of a man who arrives in New York, stumbles into a murder, and finds himself—by a series of accidents—married to a woman he has never met. It is a breathless, high-stakes sprint through a single night in the city.
Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
Jonathan Swift
A traveler’s honest account of four extraordinary voyages will leave you questioning the very nature of humanity and the structures of the world you inhabit.
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
Jules Verne
Beneath the crushing weight of the silent oceans, a brilliant, vengeful exile commands a vessel that defies the laws of nature, holding three stranded captives hostage to his underwater world.
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The law of the jungle is absolute, and those who survive its shadows do so by understanding their place within the pack, the herd, and the vast, unyielding web of the natural world.
The Colors of Space
Marion Zimmer Bradley
The universe is a vast, color-drenched mystery, and humanity is merely a prisoner in its own corner. A young man risks his life and his very sense of self to shatter the barrier between two worlds.
Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891
Various
The path to success is paved with grit, a steady hand, and a willingness to trade your old drum for a better opportunity.
A Martian Odyssey
Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) Weinbaum
The universe is vast, but perhaps the greatest mystery is not what lies in the stars, but who—or what—might be looking back at us from across the void.
Triplanetary
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
The infinite reach of space hides both unimaginable wonders and predators that look like monsters, but the deadliest threat to humanity is the one we haven't yet learned how to see.
The Revolt on Venus
Carey Rockwell
A routine training exercise in the deep jungle of Venus escalates into a desperate struggle for the survival of the solar system against a hidden insurrection.
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
A young man discovers his birthright is held by a murderous uncle, only to find himself cast into a perilous odyssey across the wild, fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Scotland.
The Air Pirate
Guy Thorne
A silent, lethal predator haunts the high-altitude shipping lanes, plundering air-liners with mechanical precision. As the world’s authorities scramble, one man realizes the monster is not a foreign power, but a ghost from his own past.
The call of the wild
Jack London
The primitive call of the wild pulses through every creature; it is only a matter of time before the thin veneer of civilization cracks and the ancient, savage heart begins to beat again.
A Journey into the Interior of the Earth
Jules Verne
What lies beneath the feet of every human is not a silent, solid foundation, but a vast, untraversed frontier waiting to be mapped by the desperate and the daring.
The Undersea Tube
L. Taylor (Lucile Taylor) Hansen
The marvel of a trans-oceanic railway turns to a nightmare of ancient ruins and tectonic fury, leaving one man to carry the weight of a secret that history refuses to believe.
The Railway Children
E. (Edith) Nesbit
The lives of three children change overnight when their father is mysteriously taken away, forcing them to find a new, rugged home beside a railway line where they must learn to survive and wait for the truth.
Wizard
Laurence M. Janifer
The line between a miracle and a heresy is often drawn by a single, desperate mind. In an age of shadows, one man gambles that the deadliest enemy of his people might become their greatest secret asset.
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
The urge to wander, often at the expense of one’s own safety, is a persistent human affliction that can lead to either ruin or a strange, solitary form of wisdom.
Anabasis
Xenophon
A mercenary army is stranded deep in enemy territory, surrounded by hostile empires and brutal mountains. They have no king, no supplies, and only one way home: through thousands of miles of wilderness.
The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery
Hildegard G. Frey
A quiet, historic house holds secrets of the past, but the real mystery is whether a fractured family can mend itself in time for a Christmas celebration.
Cynthia's Chauffeur
Louis Tracy
The open road beckons as an American heiress and her mysterious driver embark on a thousand-mile tour through the lush, sun-drenched landscapes of Edwardian England.
The Silent Barrier
Louis Tracy
Between the jagged peaks of the Swiss Alps and the crushing weight of hidden pasts, two strangers find their fates irrevocably tangled.
A princess of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The red planet hangs in the night sky, a distant, beckoning mystery. A man who has touched its soil once finds himself stranded on Earth, forever listening for the call of a world he cannot reach.
White Fang
Jack London
The frozen, silent Northland is a place where life is a desperate struggle against the crushing, inevitable cold. In this unforgiving landscape, a creature born of wild instinct must navigate the brutal laws of nature to survive.
The Mysterious Island
Jules Verne
The impossible, desperate escape of five men from a storm-tossed balloon ends in a mystery: how will they conquer a wild, uninhabited island with nothing but their wits and a dog?
Quintus Claudius: A Romance of Imperial Rome. Volume 1
Ernst Eckstein
In the shadow of the Colosseum, a young nobleman risks his life to defy the cruel whims of a decaying empire. Amidst the marble opulence of Rome, a secret brotherhood of faith begins to challenge the blood-soaked foundations of Caesar’s power.
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
In the vast, untamed woods of the American frontier, a scout and his Mohican companions race against time to rescue two sisters from a ruthless enemy during a brutal colonial war.
The Lost World
Arthur Conan Doyle
Deep in the Amazonian basin, a forgotten plateau holds the living echoes of an ancient, prehistoric past. Here, the laws of evolution have stood still, shielding creatures long thought extinct from the march of time.
The Chessmen of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
When the sky itself turns against you, the only way to survive is to stop playing by the rules of men and start playing by the rules of the game.
'Firebrand' Trevison
Charles Alden Seltzer
The dust of the West hides a hard truth: when the law is a tool for the powerful, only the man who dares to be an outlaw can restore justice.
The gods of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The red planet is a place of ancient, dying light where honor is measured by the length of a blade and the secret of life is guarded by shadows.
The warlord of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A stranger to this world, an Earth man stands alone against the dying light of a planet where sword-play is the only law and the secrets of the gods are written in blood and radium.
Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space
Jules Verne
The cosmos is not merely a stage; it is a predator and a playground. When a rogue comet grazes the Earth, it spirits away a handful of souls into the infinite, turning the impossible into their only reality.
Peter the Brazen: A Mystery Story of Modern China
George F. (George Frank) Worts
The crackling of a wireless key in a mist-shrouded harbor is the start of a journey where one man’s legendary reflexes become the only barrier against a web of shadow.
The Land That Time Forgot
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The discovery of a sealed thermos floating in the cold waters off Greenland leads a bored traveler to a manuscript detailing a journey into a hidden, primeval world where evolution has gone wildly, terrifyingly wrong.
The Lost Continent
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The world you know ended centuries ago, but the horizon still hides the truth. Beyond the forbidden lines of the map, a forgotten Europe waits to be rediscovered by those brave—or reckless—enough to cross.
Out of Time's Abyss
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The lush, prehistoric jungles of Caprona hold a secret more terrifying than any dinosaur, where human life is a strange, evolving cycle and the sky itself hides winged horrors.
My Friend the Chauffeur
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
A wealthy American widow, a titled Englishman acting as a chauffeur, and a predatory prince collide on a grand European motor tour, where the open road reveals both the beauty of the continent and the true character of men.
The Mask: A Story of Love and Adventure
Arthur Hornblow
The impostor wears his brother’s face, but he cannot wear his heart. A woman’s instinct is the only thing standing between a family’s ruin and the lethal greed of a cold-blooded double.
Priscilla's Spies
George A. Birmingham
The summer holidays begin with a victory on the cricket pitch and end with a secret campaign on the Irish coast. When teenage cousins Priscilla and Frank join forces, they find that outwitting grown-ups is the most exhilarating game of all.
The Hawk of Egypt
Joan Conquest
A young woman’s impulsive journey into the heart of Egypt entangles her in a web of ancient secrets, desert storms, and the dangerous, all-consuming passions of men who live by codes far older than the modern world.
The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806
Meriwether Lewis
A vast, unmapped wilderness awaits, yet the true discovery lies in the daily endurance of men pushing toward an ocean they have only dreamed of finding.
Blue-grass and Broadway
Maria Thompson Daviess
The need for a quick fortune drives a naive Southern girl into the high-stakes, glittering, and often ruthless world of Broadway theatrical production.
Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey
Ingersoll Lockwood
A young aristocrat and his loyal canine companion descend into the earth, seeking a legendary world hidden beneath the crust of our own, where human nature is reflected in strange, subterranean societies.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A cyclone carries a girl from the Kansas prairies to a vibrant, perilous realm where the only path home is paved with yellow brick and guarded by a mysterious, distant ruler.
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
The ocean is a vast, indifferent mirror. Look long enough into its depths, and you will find your own soul staring back, or perhaps a monster of your own making.
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Jules Verne
The vast, uncharted heart of Africa waits for no one—unless you happen to be floating five thousand feet above it in a balloon of your own design.