Free summaries
Adventure — page 65
4,170 public-domain adventure books, summarised. Page 65 of 87.
The Boy Fortune Hunters in China
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A group of young adventurers travels into the heart of a remote Chinese province to fulfill a dying prince's final wish, only to become entangled in a lethal struggle for ancient, hidden wealth.
The Golden Rock
Ernest Glanville
The legacy of an old hunter leads two companions into the heart of Africa, where they confront shifting loyalties, tribal warfare, and the heavy toll of obsession.
The Guns of Europe
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
The outbreak of the First World War signals the end of an era, forcing a young man into a sudden, perilous transition from a spectator of history to a participant in its most violent chapter.
The Motor Boys in the Clouds
Clarence Young
Three inseparable friends trade their motorcars and boats for a daring flight into the clouds, encountering mechanical peril, hostile rivals, and the unpredictable mysteries of the early age of aviation.
The Princess Galva: A Romance
David Whitelaw
HOOK A bored London clerk trades his humdrum existence for a high-stakes conspiracy, finding himself the unlikely guardian of a princess and a kingdom’s fractured future.
The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
A young man of mysterious origins navigates the final, decisive struggle for North America, caught between colonial loyalties and the shifting tides of the French and Indian War.
The Voodoo Gold Trail
Walter Walden
The search for a lost gold mine leads a group of young men into the heart of a perilous island, where they must outwit a ruthless criminal and his voodoo-practicing allies. It is a tale of calculated risks and narrow escapes that tests the bonds of brotherhood against the allure of wealth.
The Young Castellan: A Tale of the English Civil War
George Manville Fenn
The fate of a historic castle rests in the hands of a boy, whose desperate preparations to defend his home against an encroaching civil war reveal the true cost of loyalty.
The Young Cavalier: A Story of the Civil Wars
Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
A young Royalist escapes the wreckage of his family’s ancestral home, joining a desperate band of loyalists to navigate the perilous, shifting tides of the English Civil War.
With the Indians in the Rockies
James Willard Schultz
A young boy’s journey into the wild becomes a profound test of endurance, friendship, and survival alongside a resilient Blackfeet companion. This memoir of the American frontier captures the raw, unforgiving beauty of the Rockies through the eyes of two youths forced to mature in the face of mortal danger.
Yule-Tide Yarns
Unknown
This anthology gathers high-stakes tales of duty, survival, and colonial adventure, offering a window into the late-Victorian appetite for grit and heroism in the face of the unknown.
A Thane of Wessex: Being a Story of the Great Viking Raids into Somerset
Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler
A disgraced young nobleman loses his status and home, only to rise as a vital defender of Wessex against the encroaching Viking fleets. His journey of redemption tests his loyalty to king, country, and his beloved Alswythe.
Adventures of a Telegraph Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Sixteen-year-old Paul Parton navigates the bustling streets of late nineteenth-century New York as an honest, quick-witted telegraph messenger, gradually unraveling his origins while earning his way toward a brighter future.
At Whispering Pine Lodge
Lawrence J. Leslie
A group of adventurous boys ventures into the Adirondack wilderness to find a missing youth, only to stumble upon a secret fur farm and a dangerous, hidden conspiracy.
Black Beaver, the Trapper
James Campbell Lewis
A life on the trail leaves little room for polished grammar, but it yields stories no indoor writer could ever invent.
Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony
Laura Lee Hope
Two children seek to recover their stolen pet pony from a band of gypsies. This simple adventure explores the bond between siblings and the courage of small people in an adult world.
By Right of Sword
Arthur W. Marchmont
An Englishman stepping into the shoes of a disgraced Russian officer must fight duels, untangle deadly political intrigue, and risk everything to save the Tsar from assassination.
Four Months in a Sneak-Box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico
Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Holmes) Bishop
This travelogue chronicles a solitary, 2,600-mile journey from the icy Ohio River to the tropical Florida coast, performed in a twelve-foot, custom-built wooden boat designed for hunting. It is a rare, firsthand account of a vanishing American landscape, captured with the keen eye of a nineteenth-century naturalist…
Habits, Haunts and Anecdotes of the Moose and Illustrations from Life
Charles Albert Jones
In the silence of the Northern wilderness, the forest's greatest monarch retreats from hunter and camera alike, yielding its secrets only to those willing to brave the snow.
In the Mahdi's Grasp
George Manville Fenn
Harry Frere is in chains in the Sudan, presumed dead after the fall of Khartoum. In London, his younger brother Frank refuses to abandon hope and hatches a daring plan to rescue him. <Image alt="A young European man in traditional Arab traveling robes standing in a desert encampment" caption="Frank Frere disguised…
North-Pole Voyages: Embracing Sketches of the Important Facts and Incidents in the Latest American Efforts to Reach the North Pole, from the Second Grinnell Expedition to That of the Polaris
Zachariah Atwell Mudge
Navigating thousands of frozen miles, nineteenth-century American explorers brave bone-chilling dark, crumbling ice floes, and starvation to chart the mysteries surrounding the North Pole.
On The Blockade
Oliver Optic
The young commander of the Bronx faces a treacherous test as he patrols the Southern coast, where hidden enemies aboard his own ship and daring blockade runners threaten his mission to preserve the Union.
On the Kentucky Frontier: A Story of the Fighting Pioneers of the West
James Otis
Across the shadowed forests of the Revolutionary frontier, survival hinges on quick decisions, constant vigilance, and the fragile bond between greenhorn settlers and seasoned woodsmen.
Tales of Romance
Unknown
A woodland outlaw shares his forest venison with a monarch in disguise, a doomed Norse warrior fights to the end upon a barren sea crag, and a northern smith shapes gold inside a dark mountain.
Ted Marsh on an Important Mission
Elmer Sherwood
A former newsboy turned Canadian academy student returns to his old Chicago haunts, stepping straight into a World War I espionage plot to thwart a German sabotage ring.
The Adventure of Elizabeth Morey, of New York: 1901
Louis Becke
Abandoned in the Pacific after a massacre, a young American woman survives fifteen terrifying months among her captors before a daring leap into the surf changes her fate.
The Cliff Climbers: A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters"
Mayne Reid
Trapped within the towering, inaccessible crags of the Himalayas, two brothers and their guide must rely on scientific ingenuity and desperate, inventive labor to engineer their escape from a natural prison.
The Cruise of the Thetis: A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection
Harry Collingwood
This tale of high-seas adventure and political intrigue follows a young Englishman who trades his quiet life for the volatile waters of the Cuban insurrection. It is a classic example of late-Victorian maritime fiction, blending technological enthusiasm with a staunch, if period-typical, moral code.
The Gay Triangle: The Romance of the First Air Adventurers
William Le Queux
An airborne motor-car, hidden death-rays, and secret service plots collide as two daring aviators fly high-stakes covert missions across Europe.
The Hot Swamp
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
A Phoenician sea-captain and a prince of ancient Britain find their fates entwined by a wandering voyage, a mysterious illness, and the enduring warmth of a legendary medicinal swamp.
The Light Keepers: A Story of the United States Light-house Service
James Otis
Living on a wave-battered offshore rock demands courage, routine, and mutual care, turning a isolated maritime light-station into an improbable classroom of duty, survival, and deep companionship.
The Motor Boys in the Army
Clarence Young
A trio of small-town friends face military training, pro-German sentiment, and a suspicious local robbery as the United States enters the First World War.
The People of the Crater
Andre Norton
A stranded post-war pilot descends beneath polar ice into an alien green valley, where he must defeat an ancient evil to save a hidden civilization.
The Pioneer Boys of the Columbia
St. George Rathborne
Two teenage cousins travel thousands of wilderness miles with the Lewis and Clark expedition, matching their frontier instincts against hostile tribes, predatory beasts, and a plotting traitor to reach the Pacific Ocean.
The Rover Boys in the Jungle
Edward Stratemeyer
A trio of spirited brothers trades the regulated life of a military academy for the untamed wilds of Africa to rescue their long-lost father.
Warrior of the Dawn
Howard Browne
A solitary warrior faces an ancient, walled civilization to rescue the woman he loves.
With Rod and Line in Colorado Waters
Lewis B. France
Escaping the city’s gray routines, a hunter of mountain streams takes up rod and line to wander through Colorado’s untamed valleys, finding sharp comedy, unpredictable companions, and quiet reverence in the shadow of the Rockies.
A Man Four-Square
William MacLeod Raine
A young cowpuncher rides into the crossfire of a range war, forced to choose between the swift justice of the gun and the slower work of building a life.
A man's woman
Frank Norris
A brutal struggle against arctic ice transforms into an equally fierce clash of wills between a ruthless explorer and an uncompromising nurse.
Aunt Hannah and Seth
James Otis
A small, lame city boy cradles his tiny white dog as he faces the roar of New York traffic, terrified of a life he does not yet understand.
Capitola the Madcap
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
She escapes forced marriages, outwits bloodthirsty outlaws, and climbs into her own enemy's fortress, refusing every script written for a nineteenth-century heroine.
Down the Rhine
Oliver Optic
Restless American academy students sail down Europe's most famous river while wrestling with nautical discipline, petty mutinies, and high-society romance.
Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
A quiet afternoon quickly transforms into a lively demonstration of practical science when a giant homemade kite ascends over a small town.
Horses Nine: Stories of Harness and Saddle
Sewell Ford
Nine working horses navigate the demands, cruelties, and occasional graces of human control, each earning a distinct legacy under harness or saddle.
Jonah and Co
Dornford Yates
Wealthy, witty, and entirely irrepressible, an English family takes to the sunny roads of post-war France, turning broken magnetos, mistaken identities, and rogue antique dealers into a masterclass in high-spirited living.
Lorelei of the Red Mist
Leigh Brackett
An Earthly outlaw dies on the violent, fog-bound seas of Venus, only to wake in the borrowed flesh of a disgraced native warrior.
Motor Boat Boys Among the Florida Keys
Louis Arundel
Six teenage boys pilot a trio of motorboats down the Florida coast, turning their wilderness expedition into a spirited fishing tournament full of unexpected hazards.
On the Plains with Custer: The Western Life and Deeds of the Chief With the Yellow Hair, Under Whom Served Boy Bugler Ned Fletcher, When in the Troublous Years 1866–1876 the Fighting Seventh Cavalry Helped to Win Pioneer Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota for White Civilization and Today's Peace
Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand) Sabin
A orphan boy rides with George Armstrong Custer through decade of brutal Indian campaigning, witnessing the tragic, bloody reshaping of the American West from the saddle of the Seventh Cavalry.