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American Literature — page 101
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 101 of 101.
The crimp
Henry Leverage
A desperate whaling captain turns to a local crimp to fill his crew, leading to a high-stakes game of deception in the shadows of San Francisco’s waterfront.
The Crisis
Winston Churchill
A house divided against itself serves as the backdrop for a sweeping tale of conviction, prejudice, and reconciliation during the American Civil War. Love persists despite the ideological abyss separating a Northern-born idealist from the Southern woman who initially scorns him.
Lodusky
Frances Hodgson Burnett
This haunting tale of temptation and self-betrayal follows an artist who, while engaged to a refined woman, becomes dangerously obsessed with a mysterious, beautiful girl in the North Carolina mountains. It is a stark, psychological exploration of how easily a man’s moral compass can shatter when confronted with…
Other People's Business: The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale
Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
A resilient dressmaker finds her life unexpectedly transformed when she abandons her solitary existence to champion the happiness of others, proving that even a quiet life can be a catalyst for profound change.
Personal Poems I: Part 1 from Volume IV of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
These verses capture the quiet grace of a life anchored in moral conviction and the natural world. They offer an intimate portrait of a nineteenth-century mind grappling with the heavy burdens of conscience and memory.
Who Crosses Storm Mountain?: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
The wild, craggy silence of the winter mountains conceals a desperate flight, where a small, forgotten life suddenly binds two bitter enemies in a quiet miracle of peace.
Object, Matrimony
B. M. Bower
The lonely life of a bachelor rancher takes a chaotic turn when a mail-order marriage brings a stranger to a home built for a party, not for living.
It Might Have Happened Otherwise
Hugh Pendexter
The station agent’s long-simmering resentment toward his isolated, underpaid life pushes him to plot a crime against his own employer, only for a real-life gang of thieves to arrive and turn his fantasy into a bloody reality.
The Brigade Commander
John William De Forest
A brilliant but disgraced brigade commander leads his men to a final, crushing victory, only to face a reckoning for a devastating personal betrayal on the eve of battle.
The Celebrity, Volume 01
Winston Churchill
A celebrated author attempts to escape the suffocating pressures of his own fame by assuming a false identity in a quiet Western resort town. His arrival triggers a cascade of social deceptions, exposing the fragile pretenses of the local elite and his own hollow character.
The Loom of Life
Cotton Noe
Where memory and mountain air interweave, a poet spins the rustic life into an enduring tapestry.
The Village Convict: First published in the "Century Magazine"
Heman White Chaplin
A young man returns from prison to his coastal New England village, where quiet perseverance slowly rewrites his place among a wary community.
In Madeira Place: 1887
Heman White Chaplin
In the late 1880s, a quiet enclave near the wharves of a bustling American city becomes a microcosm of political disillusionment. When a local French immigrant community discovers that their idealized version of American democracy is just as prone to corruption as the Old World systems they fled, the faith of their…
Hooking Watermelons: 1898
Edward Bellamy
Arthur Steele returns to his quiet childhood home expecting a peaceful vacation, only to find himself entangled in a small-town drama that forces him to confront the complexities of class, reputation, and the impulsive nature of youth.
The Master of the Inn
Robert Herrick
The secret of a life well-lived is not found in the noise of the world, but in the quiet labor of the hands and the steady rhythm of a compassionate heart.
Reminiscent Poems: Part 3 From Volume II of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
The past does not stay behind; it breathes through the present, turning the weight of memory into a quiet, meditative song. This collection invites you to look back at the light of earlier years and find a steady grace in the face of time’s inevitable changes.
A Struggle For Life
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A man walks the paths of Boston Common with the face of an old man and the frame of a youth. He carries the weight of a horrific ordeal written into his faded eyes and gray-flecked hair.
The Little Violinist
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
This narrative essay serves as a quiet, somber meditation on the cost of childhood fame. It contrasts the protected, imaginative lives of two young brothers with the exhausting reality of a child performer, ultimately grappling with the tragedy of a life cut short by the demands of the stage.
A Michigan Man: 1891
Elia Wilkinson Peattie
This haunting narrative explores the displacement of a lifelong woodsman, a man whose identity is entirely bound to the northern pine forests, as he attempts to survive the indifferent machinery of a rapidly industrializing city.
The mating impulse
Edwin Balmer
A high-spirited game of cat-and-mouse between two stubborn American rivals turns into a perilous oceanic standoff when a mock-heroic pursuit of political rebellion sparks a genuine maritime disaster.
Eatin' Crow
Frank Harris
In a gold-mining camp where status is dictated by violence, two newcomers attempt to assert their dignity—one through reckless bravado and the other through wit—only to find that pride carries a fatal price.
The Christmas Miracle: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
A man searching for a divine sign amid the rugged peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains encounters a literal miracle, yet struggles to reconcile the profound reality of human grace with his desire for a supernatural display.
Rich enough
Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
The pursuit of fortune often obscures the true value of a quiet life, leaving the soul bankrupt long before the purse. Wealth, when chased at the expense of domestic peace and moral reflection, becomes a hollow prize.
My Terminal Moraine: 1892
Frank R. Stockton
A young man turns his fortunes around by discovering a hidden relic of the Ice Age beneath his family estate. What begins as a search for prosperity ends as an unlikely tale of survival and romance.
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 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 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.
The Lost Guidon: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
The sergeant who once led a doomed cavalry charge finds his only remaining battle is against the emptiness of postwar life. He discovers that some ghosts can only be laid to rest by the people who helped create them.
The Story of a Picture
Douglass Sherley
A youth discovers a silent, enigmatic portrait that seems to mirror the fluctuating anxieties of his own heart. As the image shifts before his eyes, he becomes caught in an obsessive, years-long struggle between hope and heartbreak.
The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880
Blythe Harding
This document serves as a spirited, partisan guide for the 1880 presidential election, employing a sharp Socratic dialogue to advocate for the Democratic ticket. It distills the complex political grievances of its era into a plain-spoken conversation meant to persuade the undecided voter.
Precipitations
Evelyn Scott
The city at night is a burning, breathing entity where the thin membrane between existence and oblivion wears away. These poems map the collision of human desire with the cold, unyielding architecture of the modern world.
The High Calling
Charles M. Sheldon
This narrative explores the tension between personal ambition and moral duty. It depicts a young man’s struggle for integrity within a family framework that prioritizes character over worldly success.
You Can Search Me
George V. (George Vere) Hobart
Two desperate young men gamble their remaining savings on a traveling magician, only to discover their financial salvation is tied to a web of elaborate, hilarious deceptions involving their own families.
The Gray Madam: 1899
Anna Katharine Green
A spectral figure haunts a New York apartment, leaving a young couple to question the boundary between the living and the dead. This chilling encounter serves as the entry point into a desperate, earthbound tragedy of greed and obsession.
The soldier's orphans
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A family’s struggle against the grinding poverty of post-Civil War Philadelphia is brightened by the enduring strength of their love and the quiet integrity of their hearts.
A Summer Evening's Dream: 1898
Edward Bellamy
A chance encounter in a quiet village garden forces two lifelong, unmarried companions to confront the stagnant ghost of their own youth. The result is a startling, tender, and somewhat surreal resolution to a forty-year hesitation.
"Old Harmless"
Roy Norton
This story follows an elderly prospector living in a remote mountain gulch, whose peaceful, solitary existence is threatened by the encroachment of industrial development and the cold machinery of the law.
John Smith, U.S.A
Eugene Field
The spirit of a wide-ranging, turn-of-the-century American voice captures the shifting moods of a nation, moving seamlessly from the rugged frontier to the refined sensibilities of the classical past.
John Lothrop Motley. a memoir
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A brilliant, restless young man finds his true calling only after years of scattered ambition and failure, ultimately mastering the discipline required to resurrect the history of a nation.
P'laski's Tunament: 1891
Thomas Nelson Page
This story follows the comic, self-important narration of an elderly man who takes immense pride in his past, his social status, and his ability to dispense rough justice. It is a portrait of a man who clings to the fading hierarchies of his youth as he navigates the indignities of his later years.
Samantha among the Brethren
Marietta Holley
A sharp-witted farm wife navigates the absurdity of domestic labor and the clash of stubborn personalities with humor, unwavering common sense, and an eye for the quiet truths of human nature.
The Celebrity, Volume 03
Winston Churchill
When a charming stranger joins a summer lake retreat, a local lawyer's quiet irritation turns upside down upon discovering his companion is a wanted embezzler.
Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
An observant man watches a mysterious couple settle into a secluded cottage, fueling his imagination with questions about their guarded behavior. This meditation on neighborly curiosity reveals the quiet boundaries between privacy and community in a small village.
Bay of Seven Islands, and other poems: Part 7 From Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
Skilled mariners brave icy northern seas and ghostly shores, while resilient women endure persecution and quiet domestic trials across a tapestry of verse.
Two Christmas Celebrations
Theodore Parker
On a stormy December night in New England, two unmarried siblings decide to reshape their village's holiday, healing old feuds and loneliness through a community festival for every child.
Miss Mehetabel's Son
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Stranded in a decaying New Hampshire tavern, a civil engineer uncovers a lonely boarder’s elaborate, heartbreaking delusion about an imaginary child.
PRoblem
Alan Edward Nourse
A PR man uses the sanctity of motherhood to save an alien migration, only to discover humanity is being traded into a frozen exile.
A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard
Lysander Spooner
A searing public challenge questions whether any human being can ever hold the moral right to govern another through man-made laws.