Free summaries
Adventure — page 29
5,964 public-domain adventure books, summarised. Page 29 of 125.
Peck's Bad Boy with the Cowboys
George W. (George Wilbur) Peck
A young rascal drags his gullible father through the American West, turning every wild adventure into a chaotic masterpiece of slapstick, trickery, and near-disaster.
Rodman the Boatsteerer, and Other Stories: 1898
Louis Becke
A mutinous whaleman’s violent strike sets off a cascade of rogue escapes, bloody clashes, and tragic fates across the 19th-century Pacific.
Saint Bartholomew's Eve: A Tale of the Huguenot Wars
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
An English youth with French heritage crosses the Channel to fight for his faith, only to find himself caught in the brutal, shifting tides of the French Wars of Religion.
The Boy Hunters of Kentucky
Edward Sylvester Ellis
On his twelfth birthday, a pioneer boy receives his first rifle and steps into the dense, dangerous wilderness of frontier Kentucky, where every hunt can swiftly become a desperate struggle for survival.
The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon
Baker, Samuel White, Sir
Tracked game and razor-sharp steel command a wild landscape where a single misstep transforms the hunter into the helpless prey.
The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith: An Improving History for Old Boys, Young Boys, Good Boys, Bad Boys, Big Boys, Little Boys, Cow Boys, and Tom-Boys
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
Childhood imagination turns a Scottish countryside into a grand theater of simulated warfare, where bruised knuckles, improvised dungeons, and playground diplomacy carry all the weight of empires.
Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp
Alice B. Emerson
Across frozen Virginia tracks and snow-choked mountain trails, an adventurous schoolgirl risks everything to help a stranded stranger claim a lost inheritance.
Dick in the Everglades
A. W. (Anthony Weston) Dimock
Two boys pit their strength and grit against the wild, untamed wilderness of the early twentieth-century Florida Everglades.
In Quest of Gold
Alfred St. Johnston
Bound by a family debt that threatens their Australian cattle station, two young brothers venture into the uncharted wilderness, braving treacherous terrain, indigenous conflict, and ruthlessly opportunistic bushrangers in search of a hidden mountain stream filled with gold.
Pioneers of the Pacific Coast: A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
Agnes C. Laut
Centuries of maritime ambition and wilderness conquest collide along the rugged shores of the Pacific Northwest, where brave explorers and fierce fur traders carved out a new realm.
A Jacobite Exile: Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
Spies, exiled nobility, and Swedish military campaigns converge in a broad historical saga of personal survival, political intrigue, and wartime honor.
A Jolly Fellowship
Frank R. Stockton
Two American boys set off on a winter voyage to Florida and the Bahamas, turning an ordinary convalescent trip into an unpredictable, sun-drenched adventure.
A Marriage at Sea
William Clark Russell
A midnight escape from a French convent school lands two young lovers on a fragile yacht in the middle of a gathering tempest.
A Rock in the Baltic
Robert Barr
A rash British naval officer fires on a mysterious Baltic cliff, setting off an international incident that ends in a Russian secret prison.
Journal of a Trip to California by the Overland Route Across the Plains in 1850-51
Unknown
A wooden wagon, splintered by endless prairie dust and held together by improvised iron rings, traces a grueling overland path toward the gold fields of California.
Life in the forests of the Far East (vol. 2 of 2)
St. John, Spenser, Sir
A British diplomat navigates swollen rivers, dense jungle precipices, and volatile local politics to map the uncharted interior of nineteenth-century Borneo.
The Cruise of the Dazzler
Jack London
A restless schoolboy flees his ordinary life for a berth on a San Francisco Bay sloop, only to learn his new crewmates are thieves.
The mystery of Cabin Island
Franklin W. Dixon
A frozen bay, a stolen car, and an uninvited watchman set the stage for an icy island adventure filled with secret ciphers and missing fortunes.
The tavern knight
Rafael Sabatini
In the wake of Worcester, a scarred, bottle-hardened Cavalier swordsman binds a shivering young Royalist to a dark oath of vengeance, setting off a perilous trek through a fractured England.
The Valley of the Giants
Peter B. (Peter Bernard) Kyne
In 1850, a lone pioneer carries his rifle and axe onto an isolated California shore, launching an empire among the ancient redwoods that his son must later risk everything to defend.
With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
When Britain and France fought for North America, a young rescue from the English coast became an officer whose courage helped shape a continent.
First Across the Continent: The Story of the Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6
Noah Brooks
A daring journey into an uncharted wilderness reveals the vast scope and endless perils of the American continent.
Gold-Seeking on the Dalton Trail: Being the Adventures of Two New England Boys in Alaska and the Northwest Territory
Arthur R. (Arthur Ripley) Thompson
Seeking adventure in the untamed Yukon, two young New England brothers join their father and uncle on a perilous Klondike trail.
Jack North's Treasure Hunt
Roy Rockwood
An iron-willed New England teenager travels to South America, braving industrial schemes, jungle predators, civil warfare, and geysers to forge his own fortune and unearth a buried treasure.
Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Edgar Rice Burroughs
In the sun-baked wild, a man raises a golden cub to hunt by his side, only for a bitter conspiracy and a uncanny double to strip him of his home, his gold, and his identity.
Ted Strong's Motor Car
Edward C. Taylor
An ambitious young cowboy leads his loyal crew across the American West, trading punches with cattle rustlers, outsmarting train robbers, and chasing down high-speed adventure.
The Chief of the Ranges: A Tale of the Yukon
H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
In the shadow of the mountains, a young woman's heritage and a chief's vision collide against the brutal dominance of coastal raiders.
The Dodge Club
James De Mille
A comedic journey through Europe with the Dodge Club, blending adventure, mishaps, and cultural satire.
The Story of the Glittering Plain: Which Has Been Also Called the Land of Living Men or the Acre of the Undying
William Morris
A seeker refuses the offer of eternal youth and effortless peace, choosing instead the griefs and bonds of mortal love.
The Yukon Trail: A Tale of the North
William MacLeod Raine
A tale of adventure, romance, and survival in the frozen Yukon.
Two on the Trail: A Story of Canada Snows
E. E. (Edith Elise) Cowper
Left behind in a remote northern cabin, two resourceful siblings must flee across the freezing Canadian wilderness with their family’s life savings to outrun a pair of ruthless trappers who will stop at nothing to steal it.
A Maid and a Million Men: the candid confessions of Leona Canwick, censored indiscreetly by James G. Dunton
James G. (James Gerald) Dunton
A spirited young woman assumes her twin brother’s military identity, plunging into the chaos of World War I to escape a stifling life and find true adventure.
A son of the city
Herman Gastrell Seely
A boy’s ambition in early twentieth-century Chicago shifts from childhood games to the complexities of social status, romantic rivalry, and the pursuit of money.
Edgar the Ready: A Tale of the Third Edward's Reign
W. P. Shervill
A young esquire rises through the ranks of medieval warfare and personal peril to safeguard his master’s honor and win the heart of a noblewoman.
Oswald Bastable and Others
E. (Edith) Nesbit
A spirited collection of imaginative tales, this volume follows the inquisitive, often mischievous children of the Bastable family and others as they navigate the fine, blurred line between mundane reality and the world of wonder.
Space Tug
Murray Leinster
The first steps into the void are fraught with peril, but for one crew, the greatest dangers are not the vacuum of space, but the saboteurs waiting in the dark.
The Belovéd Vagabond
William John Locke
A gifted, wandering soul rejects the constraints of polite society, choosing a life of music, poverty, and artistic freedom across the open roads of France.
The Lost Kafoozalum
Pauline Ashwell
The prospect of a galaxy-spanning war rests on a delicate, manufactured lie, but the students sent to stage it find that their greatest challenges are not the aliens, but their own messy human hearts.
Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters
Victor Appleton
Tom Swift, a young inventor, develops an aerial fire-fighting system to combat blazes in tall buildings.
Snowflakes and Sunbeams
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
The wilderness of the Canadian Northwest offers a vast, unforgiving stage for the transition from youth to manhood. Through peril, camaraderie, and the harsh lessons of the frontier, a group of young men discover the true weight of their own character.
The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas
George S. (George Shepard) Chappell
The South Seas are a playground for the absurd in this deadpan satire of early 20th-century travelogues, where explorers discover islands that sound like groceries and fall in love with "Mother of Pearl." It is a sharp, affectionate poke at the era’s obsession with "tropic-scented" discovery.
The Shogun's Daughter
Robert Ames Bennet
HOOK A young American naval officer survives a shipwreck on the coast of Japan, only to be thrust into a high-stakes power struggle within the isolationist Shogunate.
The Three Midshipmen
William Henry Giles Kingston
Three young schoolboys embark on a lifetime of adventure in the British Navy, facing pirates, slavers, and the perils of the sea in a relentless pursuit of duty and glory.
Trail Tales
James David Gillilan
HOOK A minister’s collection of frontier sketches captures the raw, human pulse of the American Northwest, where arid sagebrush plains transformed into blooming settlements through faith, grit, and the relentless labor of pioneers.
A Master of Fortune: Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle
C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
Captain Owen Kettle is a diminutive, iron-willed sea captain who navigates the brutal realities of late-Victorian maritime life with a Bible in one pocket and a revolver in the other. He is a man of relentless competence, a master of salvage and survival who treats every crisis—whether a mutiny on the Congo or a…
Flowing Gold
Rex Beach
The Texas oil boom transforms a wilderness into a high-stakes arena where sudden fortunes and bitter rivalries collide. A drifter turned operator navigates this volatile landscape, proving that in the quest for gold, the most dangerous wells are often the ones dug by human ambition.
John Dough and the Cherub
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
The life of a baker’s creation is short, but for one gingerbread man, accidental magic grants him a soul and a long, perilous journey toward true independence.
The Killer
Stewart Edward White
A young man’s casual dare to spend a night at a notorious ranch leads him into a dangerous web of intrigue, hidden agendas, and frontier justice. It is a quiet, observant encounter with the shadows of the Old West.