Free summaries
American Literature — page 26
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 26 of 101.
The Root of Evil
Dixon, Thomas, Jr.
A young lawyer’s moral integrity is tested by the seductive power of extreme wealth and a woman who chooses gold over true love.
Tom Grogan
Francis Hopkinson Smith
A resolute widow fights to keep her husband’s business alive against the corruption of local power. She stands as a solitary force, defending her family’s dignity and future in a changing industrial landscape.
Young People's Pride: A Novel
Stephen Vincent Benét
This novel captures the fragile, restless spirit of a post-World War I generation caught between the rigidity of their parents’ social expectations and the lure of a bohemian life abroad. It is a sharp, atmospheric portrait of youth in transition.
A Texas Matchmaker
Andy Adams
The vast, open reaches of South Texas in the 1870s provide the setting for a quiet, unfolding portrait of a seasoned cattleman and the young man who learns the rhythm of the range at his side.
He Comes Up Smiling
Charles Sherman
A quick-witted drifter accidentally assumes the identity of a high-flying stockbroker, leading to a sprawling, farcical adventure that forces him to navigate the absurdity of wealth, status, and his own unexpected capacity for love.
Joyce of the North Woods
Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock
Caught in a loveless marriage within a harsh logging camp, a young woman finds her path toward a new identity inextricably linked to an enigmatic newcomer.
The best stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Volume 2 (of 2)
Sarah Orne Jewett
A solitary child protects a rare bird, while aging women find grace in the quiet corners of New England. These stories capture the fading rhythms of rural life with profound, patient empathy.
The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow
Anna Katharine Green
A young woman is struck down by an arrow in a crowded museum, leaving no trace of her killer. An elderly detective must solve the impossible crime while the true culprit hides in plain sight.
The Red City: A Novel of the Second Administration of President Washington
S. Weir (Silas Weir) Mitchell
In a city gripped by revolutionary fervor and the chilling threat of yellow fever, an exiled French nobleman seeks refuge, love, and a new identity within the quiet, Quaker-influenced society of Washington’s America.
The Street of Seven Stars
Mary Roberts Rinehart
HOOK In the shadow of a historic Viennese hunting lodge, a struggling American violinist and a lonely medical student navigate the harsh, beautiful landscape of poverty and budding love.
At the Foot of the Rainbow
Gene Stratton-Porter
The promise of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow is a myth, but for two men in the Indiana river bottoms, the true treasure lies in the quiet, hard-won labor of a life shared.
Paradise Garden: The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment
George Gibbs
A sheltered young man, raised in isolation to avoid the corrupting influence of women, is thrust into the modern world and discovers that human nature is far more complex than his books ever suggested.
The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth
Timothy Templeton
A satirical portrait of the mid-nineteenth-century American political machine, this work follows an irrepressible agent through the chaotic, self-important corridors of the Franklin Pierce administration.
The Game
Jack London
This spare, haunting narrative explores the fatal friction between a young man’s devotion to the brutal prize ring and his budding life with the woman he intends to marry.
The Main Chance
Meredith Nicholson
A man of ambition navigates the moral complexities of business and romance in a rising Midwestern city, where success is the ultimate, and often dangerous, pursuit.
The Old Manse (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
An old parsonage in Concord becomes a sanctuary where the quiet rhythms of nature and the ghosts of history invite a deep, reflective stillness. This meditation on a home serves as a bridge between the vibrant, ephemeral present and the enduring weight of the past.
Cabin Fever
B. M. Bower
HOOK The isolation of the rugged West acts as a merciless mirror, revealing the hidden flaws and potential redemptions of those who share its lonely, silent spaces.
Other Things Being Equal
Emma Wolf
HOOK A young woman navigates the delicate, often painful friction between her traditional upbringing and an unexpected, cross-cultural love in late nineteenth-century San Francisco.
Saturday's Child
Kathleen Thompson Norris
Saturday’s child must work for her living, and Susan Brown finds that lesson to be the defining rhythm of her young adulthood. This story tracks her journey from a clerk in a San Francisco office to the center of a life built on grit, sacrifice, and the quiet rewards of a shared home.
Sir Christopher: A Romance of a Maryland Manor in 1644
Maud Wilder Goodwin
Amid the volatile tensions of 1644 Maryland, a loyalist nobleman faces false accusations of murder, fighting to reclaim his honor and protect those he loves from the reach of a ruthless adversary.
Tempest and Sunshine
Mary Jane Holmes
The lives of two Kentucky sisters—one a tempest of volatility, the other a steady sunshine of goodness—diverge as they navigate love, deception, and the rigid expectations of the nineteenth-century social order.
Washington Irving
Charles Dudley Warner
This biography offers a balanced, intimate portrait of America’s first world-renowned man of letters, tracing his evolution from a charming socialite to a dedicated, globally celebrated chronicler of history and folklore.
Devil's Ford
Bret Harte
The sudden discovery of gold transforms a struggling wilderness outpost into a hub of frenzied, naive ambition. This story captures the fragile intersection of frontier grit, social aspiration, and the crushing weight of hidden pasts.
Kincaid's Battery
George Washington Cable
A young woman’s secret vow to her soldier creates a web of longing, intrigue, and survival that spans the length of the American Civil War in Louisiana.
The Definite Object: A Romance of New York
Jeffery Farnol
A disillusioned millionaire wanders into the heart of New York’s slums to find a purpose, only to discover that the most profound object of his search is the humanity he once ignored.
The Story of an Untold Love
Paul Leicester Ford
A man keeps a secret diary of his lifelong, unrequited devotion to a woman he believes is forever out of his reach. This intimate confession reveals how his hidden love shaped his path from a lonely, brilliant boy into a man of quiet sacrifice.
The sturdy oak
Unknown
A political candidate’s rigid worldview crumbles when he finds his own home invaded and his career sabotaged by the very forces he once sought to suppress.
Trent's Trust, and Other Stories
Bret Harte
A penniless drifter finds sudden fortune and a mysterious secret, bridging the divide between frontier hardship and the polished, often deceptive, social worlds of the late nineteenth century.
A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction
William Dean Howells
A quiet tide of introspection is turning the course of contemporary fiction away from empty spectacle and toward a deeper, more rigorous engagement with the human soul. This critical survey examines how recent novelists are reclaiming the moral and psychological complexity that true literature requires.
Angela's Business
Henry Sydnor Harrison
A young writer obsessed with the "Woman’s Movement" attempts to dissect the nature of modern femininity, only to find his own life—and heart—inextricably entangled in his research.
Beginners Luck
Emily Hahn
A young man arrives in the vast, arid landscapes of New Mexico, only to find himself adrift between the suffocating expectations of his social circle and the exhilarating, reckless freedom of the open road.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century miscellany captures the intellectual pulse of the 1850s, weaving together travelogues, historical surveys, and domestic fiction into a single, vibrant tapestry of Victorian-era literary life.
Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania
Bayard Taylor
A young farmer’s life is upended by a disastrous marriage and the arrival of a soul-deep connection, forcing him to confront the stifling expectations of his rural Pennsylvania community.
Larkspur
Jane Abbott
A spirited girl finds her lonely world transformed when a young war refugee moves into her home, sparking a season of personal growth, Girl Scout service, and heartfelt discovery.
Other Tales and Sketches: (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This collection of tales and sketches explores the boundary between the living and the dead, finding both terror and profound beauty in the transient nature of human existence. Through a blend of travelogue, legend, and spectral narration, these pieces examine how objects and places become vessels for memory and…
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of America in 1863, blending the urgent rhetoric of the Civil War with timeless literary reflection and scientific inquiry.
The Mayor's Wife
Anna Katharine Green
A young woman seeking employment enters a household shrouded in secrets, only to discover that the greatest mysteries are not ghostly hauntings, but the hidden sins of the living.
A Dream of Empire
William Henry Venable
This historical novel dramatizes the downfall of a visionary aristocrat and the seductive, ruinous ambition of a political outcast. It is a story of how grand designs, when detached from reality, collapse into the ashes of private lives.
Alice Wilde: The Raftsman's Daughter. A Forest Romance
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
A young woman’s quiet life in the Michigan wilderness is shattered by the arrival of a city-bred stranger and the dangerous, obsessive jealousy of a local woodsman.
Clotel
William Wells Brown
The tragedy of systemic enslavement is laid bare through the fractured lives of those seeking freedom, revealing a nation haunted by the contradiction between its professed Christianity and its brutal commerce in human bodies.
Openings in the Old Trail
Bret Harte
This collection offers a series of vignettes from the American West, capturing the intersection of rugged, high-stakes frontier life and the fragile, often absurd, social aspirations of its inhabitants. It portrays a world where men and women, isolated by the vastness of the Sierras, navigate sudden fortunes,…
Pembroke: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
This study of stubbornness in a remote New England village explores how the human will, when pushed beyond the bounds of reason, can act like a slow-moving disease. It suggests that the only cure for such rigidity is a love so unselfish that it forces the individual to drop their defenses and reclaim their humanity.
The Circular Study
Anna Katharine Green
A seasoned detective finds his waning enthusiasm reignited by a bizarre, high-stakes murder in a historic mansion, thrusting him into a labyrinthine plot of familial vengeance. This atmospheric mystery challenges an aging investigator to reconcile his traditional methods with the volatile secrets of a younger…
The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl, as Told by Herself
Dorothy Richardson
This is an unvarnished account of survival in the industrial belly of early 20th-century New York. It chronicles the grinding reality of a young woman who trades her autonomy for a grueling, precarious existence as a wage-earner.
The Rival Pitchers: A Story of College Baseball
Lester Chadwick
The diamond is groomed, the air smells of spring, and the freshman must decide whether to fight for his place on the mound or fold under the pressure of a bitter rival.
The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln
Dixon, Thomas, Jr.
The tall, weary figure of the Civil War’s most enigmatic leader finds his soul tested by the crushing weight of a fracturing nation. This historical novel reimagines the President’s private struggles as he navigates the chasm between war-torn North and South.
The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish
James Fenimore Cooper
This story of the American frontier captures the stark, heavy tension of life in a Puritan settlement during the terror of King Philip’s War, where faith and survival are inextricably linked. It is a somber, meditative examination of how violence reshapes identity and leaves behind only the ghosts of what once was.
Whitefoot the Wood Mouse
Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess
A tiny mouse navigating the vast, predator-filled Green Forest finds that survival requires more than just sharp senses—it demands a capacity for joy and the resilience to build a home in the most unexpected places.