Free summaries
American Literature — page 2
165 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 2 of 4.
The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War
Stephen Crane
The quiet, terrified heart of a young soldier is the true battlefield in this story, where the clamor of cannons serves only to amplify the internal struggle between cowardice and redemption.
Bambi
Marjorie Benton Cooke
A young woman marries a man of genius, only to discover that her greatest challenge is not his temperament, but his utter lack of worldly sense.
My Bondage and My Freedom
Frederick Douglass
The man who once belonged to another now claims his own voice, transforming the brutal experience of bondage into a searing, eloquent demand for the dignity of all human beings.
King Midas: a Romance
Upton Sinclair
In the rural quiet of a small town, young Helen Davis feels the stirrings of a grand, unearthly destiny, unaware that the pursuit of such "fiery gold" will demand the near-destruction of everyone she loves.
Three millions!
Oliver Optic
An inheritance of three million dollars descends upon a quiet community, acting as a catalyst for hidden virtues, secret schemes, and the eventual unmasking of a calculated villain.
The magnificent possession
Isaac Asimov
The promise of a miracle material brings not the fortune of a lifetime, but a chaotic, malodorous reckoning that proves some secrets are best left unbothered by human hands.
Fairy dreams
Jane G. (Jane Goodwin) Austin
The heart searches for a treasure it cannot name, wandering through forests of metaphor and mountain storms to find that the prize was always woven into the fabric of the life it already leads.
The black kiss
Robert Bloch
A young artist inherits a remote coastal house, only to find his dreams and his body slowly surrendering to a submerged, ancient hunger waiting in the dark tides.
The Roman hat mystery
Ellery Queen
A man is found dead in a crowded theater, yet the murderer seems to have vanished into thin air. A father and son must now dismantle the impossible to reveal a cold-blooded secret.
I, Mars
Ray Bradbury
The phone rings for a man who has lived alone on Mars for sixty years. He is about to discover that his most dangerous enemy is not the isolation of the planet, but his own younger self.
The sinister mark
Lee Thayer
A star of the stage vanishes, leaving behind a blood-stained scarf and a trail of baffling, contradictory clues. A private investigator must unravel a web of identity to find a woman who was never truly there.
The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
Mary Roberts Rinehart
A trio of middle-aged, single women, driven by curiosity and an irrepressible flair for chaos, repeatedly find themselves entangled in the most unlikely mysteries. Their meddling—and their commitment to their own eccentric logic—transforms mundane hospital stays and quiet vacations into series of breathless, often…
The thing in the woods
Harper Williams
HOOK When a young doctor arrives in a remote Pennsylvania woodland to cover a country practice, he discovers that the local superstitions about a "thing" in the woods are far more tangible—and dangerous—than science can explain.
The sociable ghost
Olive Harper
The city sleeps, but beneath the ancient stones of Trinity Church, a restless reporter discovers that the dead are far more talkative than the living. In this strange, shadowed assembly, class, vanity, and the weight of unfinished business persist long after the heart has ceased to beat.
The Corbin necklace
Henry Kitchell Webster
The Corbin necklace is a prize that brings out the worst in a house full of people, but a young boy with a target rifle and a sharp eye is the only one who truly knows its value.
This star shall be free
Murray Leinster
A primitive man and a superior race of aquatic aliens collide, triggering an accidental experiment that dictates the survival of humanity and the ultimate fate of the stars.
The porcelain mask
John Jay Chichester
The porcelain mask is a quiet, deliberate puzzle where the truth is hidden not by a villain’s cleverness, but by the desperate, frantic attempts of the innocent to hide a tragedy. Beneath the veneer of a classic murder mystery, a deeper story of human frailty and the tangled webs of deception waits to be unraveled.
False face
Ernest Haycox
The trap is set not with steel, but with a cigar box of cash and the quiet observation of a man who knows that human greed is the most predictable force in the wilderness.
Slighted love
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
The secrets of a shadowed past can break a heart, but only a desperate search for the truth can set a spirit free.
The seventh shot
Herman Landon
The shot rings out in the pitch-black theater, but the real mystery hides in the bright, desperate light of the Broadway stage where every player is performing a role, even when the cameras are off.
The mark of the monster
Jack Williamson
The woods hold a secret that defies the light, and a man’s own blood may be the most terrifying monster he ever encounters.
Jonah
Robert Nathan
The prophet’s task is to speak for God, but when God’s voice demands the destruction of a great city, the man chosen for the mission finds that his own human heart—full of love, doubt, and longing—refuses to obey.
The spirit-rapper
Orestes Augustus Brownson
Beneath the veneer of a rational age, a secret manipulator pulls the strings of history, only to find that the forces he has unleashed are far more terrifying than the enlightenment he once championed.
Murder in the Gilded Cage
Samuel Spewack
The sun-drenched facade of Havana hides a cold-blooded web of deception, where a socialite’s desperate craving for attention leads her straight into a lethal trap. In this high-stakes game of inheritance and ego, the truth is the only thing more dangerous than the murderer.
The man who saved New York
Ray Cummings
The fate of the free world rests in the hands of a soft-hearted hardware salesman who can abandon his body at will, but the distraction of young love proves to be a far more powerful force.
One jump ahead
Ray Humphreys
A pair of lawmen face the ruin of their reputations, only to find that the most baffling mystery in town is not a cold case from the past, but a clever deception unfolding right under their noses.
The life-eater
Harold Ward
A suffocating mist of death settles over a isolated Louisiana village, where a doctor and a schoolmaster must confront an invisible predator and the man who directs its hunger from the shadows.
Blue eyes and diamonds
Lemuel De Bra
The impulse to gamble and the terror of being found out drive a young wife to commit an act of desperate deception, only to find that the men in her life are already two steps ahead of her.
Missing men
Vincent Starrett
A missing man is often a man who simply wishes to be someone else. Behind the locked doors of an empty office and the greasepaint of a stage, a quiet, triple-lived mystery waits to be unraveled.
His brother's keeper
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The law in the desert is absolute, yet it often fails to see the humanity it is meant to serve. A man who makes his duty a religion may find that the altar he builds becomes his own tomb.
In Jeopardy
Van Tassel Sutphen
A hidden legacy of lethal light lurks within the stained glass of an ancestral Maryland estate, turning a quiet inheritance into a desperate, high-stakes battle for survival.
Letters of Asa Gray
Asa Gray
A quiet life of scientific inquiry reveals how one man charted the natural world while navigating the turbulence of the nineteenth century. Through these pages, the intellectual map of an era unfolds, anchored by steady friendships and the patient, incremental work of botany.
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A woman is prescribed total rest in a room with hideous wallpaper, only to discover that the pattern is a cage—and that she is the one meant to be held inside it.
Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
To live deliberately and encounter the essential facts of existence, one must first strip away the non-essential, finding in the quiet of the woods a mirror for the soul.
The San Rosario Ranch
Maud Howe Elliott
The California frontier becomes a crucible for a woman fleeing her past, where the rugged landscape forces a collision between romantic ideals and the harsh, unforgiving truths of social consequence.
Roughing It
Mark Twain
The frontier is not a place, but a state of mind where fortune, catastrophe, and the absurd collide. To understand the American West of the nineteenth century, one must abandon the polished histories and embrace the chaotic, leaking wisdom of a vagabond.
The Guarded Heights
Wadsworth Camp
The path to the height is rarely paved with good intentions; it is built on the cold, calculated leverage of ambition and the relentless refusal to be denied.
Officer 666
Barton Wood Currie
The theft of a masterpiece is only the beginning of a madcap game of musical chairs, where the line between the law, the criminal, and the victim vanishes into thin air.
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
The firelight catches four sisters huddled in a New England home, their father away at the front, as they trade their dreams of comfort for the quiet, difficult work of growing up together.
The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
Unknown
Discover the architecture of a vanished American literary landscape, where the short story once served as both a cultural pulse and a rigorous, documented pursuit.
Hungry Hearts
Anzia Yezierska
The world is full of people who are starving for more than food, and this book captures the frantic, beautiful, and devastating search for a life that feels like home.
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A single letter, stitched in thread of gold, marks a woman as an outcast in the harsh colonial wilderness. How she carries that burden, and how the man who shares her sin hides his own, defines the struggle of a lifetime.
The Dominant Dollar
Will Lillibridge
A man of singular ambition and a woman who refuses to be his possession navigate the wreckage of a broken engagement, revealing how the relentless pursuit of wealth dismantles the human heart.
Twenty Years of Hus'ling
J. P. (James Perry) Johnston
Are you waiting for the perfect opportunity to arrive, or will you create your own? This restless, candid memoir follows the relentless journey of a man who refuses to work for anyone else, finding his fortune in the art of the deal.
Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The soul is not a destination to be reached, but the ground upon which every person stands; it is the latent, infinite power waiting to be recognized in the quietude of one’s own mind.
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
The work begins with an invocation of the self—a single, separate person who yet insists on the vastness of the collective. It moves through a sweeping, often ecstatic exploration of the human body, the American landscape, and the eternal nature of the soul, ultimately arriving at a quiet, reflective farewell. The…
Cowboy songs, and other frontier ballads
Unknown
The cowboy is not a figure of legend, but a workingman whose quiet songs, sung by the campfire or on the trail, reveal the raw, unvarnished history of a vanishing frontier.
The Long Roll
Mary Johnston
The drumbeat of history echoes through these pages, capturing the relentless, sweeping momentum of a nation fractured by civil war and the men caught in its inexorable, long roll.