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American Literature — page 24
1,151 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 24 of 24.
The Wrong Twin
Harry Leon Wilson
Two boys from different worlds grow up in a changing town, only to find their destinies shaped by social expectations, global war, and the quiet, stubborn choices of the heart.
A Modern Instance
William Dean Howells
A young man’s ambition and a woman’s devotion collide in this searching portrait of a marriage, a story that peels back the layers of Victorian social propriety to reveal the raw, unvarnished truth of human character.
Cap'n Dan's Daughter
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
A retired sea captain and his family struggle to navigate the treacherous, artificial waters of high society after an unexpected inheritance.
Lectures and biographical sketches
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The search for a moral compass in an age of skepticism defines these reflections, where the inward life of the spirit is held as the ultimate standard for human conduct.
Old Gorgon Graham: More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
George Horace Lorimer
The seasoned merchant writes from a position of hard-won authority, mentoring his son through the complexities of professional advancement, courtship, and the responsibilities of leadership in a rapidly modernizing industrial world.
Robert Kimberly
Frank H. (Frank Hamilton) Spearman
A wealthy, powerful man finds his life’s trajectory irrevocably altered when he falls for a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage. This intimate study of conscience and consequence spans the quiet tensions of high-society life.
Sons and Fathers
Harry Stillwell Edwards
A young man seeks to uncover the truth of his parentage, only to find himself caught in a web of scandal, betrayal, and high-stakes mystery in the post-Civil War South.
The Flying U Ranch
B. M. Bower
The Happy Family of the Flying U Ranch face the loss of their leader and the encroachment of rival sheepmen, testing their loyalty and grit in the wide Montana landscape.
A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny
John R. (John Roy) Musick
A historical drama set in colonial Virginia, this narrative explores the rising tensions between royalist tyranny and the first stirrings of American republicanism a century before the Revolution.
The Driver
Garet Garrett
A visionary industrialist fights to build a railroad empire in the shadow of the 1894 economic collapse, facing both the hostility of Wall Street and the crushing weight of his own family’s resentment.
The Log School-House on the Columbia
Hezekiah Butterworth
This evocative tale of the Pacific Northwest follows a young woman and a devoted teacher as they navigate the volatile landscape of pioneer settlement, indigenous relations, and the encroaching dangers of the 1840s.
Adventures in Friendship
David Grayson
A quiet journey through the Massachusetts countryside reveals that the deepest human connections and most profound truths are hiding in plain sight along everyday dirt roads.
Cape Cod Stories
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
A crusty Cape Cod sea captain stumbles into hospitality, where eccentric summer tourists, runaway heiresses, and slippery local prophets prove far harder to navigate than any Atlantic gale.
Hector's Inheritance, Or, the Boys of Smith Institute
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A sudden blow strips a wealthy young orphan of his home, but his integrity transforms every trial into a new beginning.
Mohun
John Esten Cooke
Two swords cross above a quiet Virginia hearth, framing a portrait of a past that refuses to die without a voice.
The Clarion
Samuel Hopkins Adams
An idealistic young editor fights to reform his newspaper, confronting his quack-doctor father, local corruption, and a deadly, hidden epidemic in his city.
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast
William Cowper Brann
A ferocious nineteenth-century journalist takes aim at the hypocrisies of his age, tearing into corrupt politicians, economic theorists, and religious bigots with unforgiving satire.
The Haunted Mind (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A sudden midnight awakening leaves a sleeper suspended between reality and illusion, where dark phantoms of memory rise to haunt the mind before dissolving into peaceful visions of human connection and quiet rest.
The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A summer rainstorm sends a restless young traveler ducking into a showman's covered wagon, where he meets a band of colorful rovers who briefly accept him as their resident storyteller.
The Voice of the People
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
An ambitious boy from the dirt-roads of post-bellum Virginia fights his way to the governor’s mansion, only to learn that political victory cannot buy the heart of the woman he loves or heal a fractured state.
The White Moll
Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
In the shadowed alleys of New York’s underworld, a woman known for her mercy becomes an outlaw overnight, forced to adopt a dead crone's identity to evade the law and outwit a ruthless criminal syndicate.
Elsie Dinsmore
Martha Finley
Motherless, wealthy, and deeply devout, an eight-year-old girl in the antebellum South longs for the affection of her aloof father, whose return threatens to shatter her quiet life of faith and solitary gentleness.
Her Lord and Master
Martha Morton
A spoiled Indiana heiress marries an aristocratic English lord, expecting to rule him as she does everyone else, only to learn that real love demands self-restraint and genuine sacrifice.
Kansas Women in Literature
Nettie Garmer Barker
Pride in a state is built not merely on its agricultural bounty, but on the intellectual and creative gifts of its women, who forge art and community on the prairie.
The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
A group of nineteenth-century American tourists boards a chartered steamship for a grand, six-month excursion across Europe and the Holy Land, only to find their lofty expectations constantly punctured by reality.
A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories
Bill Nye
A sharp, dry-witted tour of Gilded Age life where no social pretense, domestic nuisance, or political scheme escapes mockery.
A Noble Woman
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A secluded coastal estate becomes a trap of suspicion, secrecy, and silent self-sacrifice when a husband's dark doubts collide with a woman's determination to shield those she loves.
Galusha the Magnificent
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
An absent-minded archeologist, stranded in a foggy Cape Cod town, wanders into the quiet, crisis-ridden life of a practical spinster and quietly turns her whole world right side up.
Little Daffydowndilly: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A sensitive boy flees his stern schoolmaster, only to discover that labor, discipline, and effort govern every corner of human life.
Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys
Louisa May Alcott
A former tomboy and her husband throw open their New England home to an unruly assortment of boys, building an unconventional school where character, work, and kind hearts matter far more than book learning.
The Minister's Charge
William Dean Howells
A well-meaning rural minister impulsively praises an uneducated farm boy's clumsy poetry, unintentionally launching the earnest young man into a bewildering apprenticeship through the harsh social strata of late nineteenth-century Boston.
The Story of Hiawatha, Adapted from Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A heroic leader harnesses supernatural gifts to unite his people, conquer legendary monsters, and guide his nation through an era of profound transformation.
Danny's Own Story
Don Marquis
Abandonment, wanderlust, and small-town schemes shape a boy’s journey across the American landscape as he tries to carve out a name for himself.
Greenacre Girls
Izola L. (Izola Louise) Forrester
An anxious urban family finds unexpected sanctuary, resilience, and quiet joy when forced to exchange luxury for a run-down countryside farm.
John Lothrop Motley, A Memoir
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A brilliant, high-strung young American sets out to write the epic histories of European liberty, only to find himself entangled in the ruthless machinery of his own nation's politics.
The Ruling Passion: Tales of Nature and Human Nature
Henry Van Dyke
A quietly resolute collection of wilderness stories showing how human devotion to music, duty, and affection survives the harshest frontier winters.
Winning the Wilderness
Margaret Hill McCarter
A young couple settles in the unbroken Kansas prairie, only to discover that building a life on the frontier demands decades of resilience against nature, war, and the slow transformation of the wilderness.
Light-Fingered Gentry
David Graham Phillips
Behind the shimmering facades of Gilded Age Manhattan, where financial moguls juggle insurance reserves and societal posturing, a bitter corporate war forces two lovers to decide what their integrity is actually worth.
Lo, Michael!
Grace Livingston Hill
A street urchin dives in front of a bullet to save a millionaire’s infant daughter, launching a lifelong transformation from slum boy to crusading attorney.
The Adventures of Bob White
Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess
When a clear, persistent whistle echoes across the Green Meadows, it signals both a cheery worker helping in the fields and a wary prey target dodging lurking predators.
The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems
Joseph Rodman Drake
A disgraced fairy battles river imps and storm demons across the Hudson Valley to restore his glowing wings and reclaim his place among the stars.
Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 2, September, 1905
Various
A tapestry of urban excess, high-stakes finance, and tragic romance captures the glittering surface and dark undercurrents of turn-of-the-century American life.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Washington Irving
Washington Irving
A comprehensive roadmap to an expansive literary legacy, organizing decades of American wilderness adventure, European lore, and historical chronicles.
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
Yoné Noguchi
A eighteen-year-old Japanese woman arrives in turn-of-the-century San Francisco with her high-ranking uncle, determined to experience American life firsthand through sharp observation, social posturing, and a series of impulsive domestic experiments.
One Basket
Edna Ferber
A collection of twelve short stories captures the quiet heartbreaks and sudden triumphs of everyday Americans coming of age alongside a rapidly transforming twentieth-century nation.
The Turmoil: A Novel
Booth Tarkington
A sickly young idealist is pushed into his father’s industrial empire, where he must choose between the poetry he loves and the brutal, smoke-choked world of Midwestern wealth.
The Village Watch-Tower
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A collection of quiet, observational stories captures the small-town lives, eccentricities, and emotional quietures of 19th-century rural Maine.