Free summaries
American Literature — page 32
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 32 of 101.
The Lady of the Aroostook
William Dean Howells
A young woman from rural Massachusetts sails for Europe aboard a cargo vessel, unaware that she is the only female passenger among a crew and small circle of men.
Cloudy Jewel
Grace Livingston Hill
For a woman whose life has been spent as a tireless, unpaid caretaker, an unexpected proposal offers the chance to run her own household. When her orphaned niece and nephew ask her to play "mother" at college, her world expands into an enduring journey of family, faith, and practical grace.
Mother Carey's Chickens
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
When a widowed mother and her four spirited children lose their fortune, they transform a run-down village dwelling into a radiant home through pure resourcefulness, good humor, and unshakable family love.
Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury
James Whitcomb Riley
Simple rural townsfolk and wandering Bohemians sing, dream, and endure life's sudden tragedies across the small-town fields and parlor hearths of nineteenth-century Indiana.
Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia
Mary Johnston
In the wilderness of Restoration-era Virginia, an exiled indentured convict and a highborn planter's daughter are drawn into a web of rebellion, captivity, and impossible love.
Rutledge
Miriam Coles Harris
A lonely orphan girl is taken from school into the mysterious world of her guardian's estate, where hidden secrets and high-society jealousy complicate her search for real love.
Septimius Felton, or, the Elixir of Life
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A young New Englander's pursuit of physical immortality turns into a haunting study of solitude, historical trauma, and self-deception.
The Dead Letter: An American Romance
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
An unread letter sitting in the dead-letter office exposes the shadow of a horrific crime, pulling a young clerk and an intuitive investigator into a web of greed, jealousy, and betrayal.
The Frontiersmen
Charles Egbert Craddock
A vast, contested wilderness tests the mettle of British settlers, French opportunists, and Cherokee nations, as personal rivalries and political intrigue shape the early American frontier.
The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush
Francis Lynde
In a corrupt Western state ruled by machine politics and corporate influence, a young reformer returns home only to find that his primary political adversary is his own father.
Weatherby's Inning: A Story of College Life and Baseball
Ralph Henry Barbour
Accused of cowardice when a drownings threatens, a fragile college freshman must brave social ostracism to redeem his reputation on the diamond.
Won in the ninth
Christy Mathewson
A rookie pitcher leaves his sun-soaked home to carve out a place on a frosty Northern campus, discovering that mastering a deadly curveball is only half as difficult as navigating college honor, fast friends, and stolen trust.
Different Girls
Unknown
This collection of stories captures the shifting spirit of the American girl at the turn of the 20th century, exploring her dreams, her quiet burdens, and the social barriers that shaped her life.
Imperium in Imperio: A Study of the Negro Race Problem. A Novel
Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert) Griggs
Two brilliant men navigate the crushing weight of systemic racism by building a secret, shadow government for their people, only to find their friendship and ideology shattered by the very violence they seek to escape.
Island Tales / On the Makaloa Mat
Jack London
A rich Hawaiian sun warms the surface of these pages, but beneath it lies the friction of two worlds colliding—the lingering elegance of old Polynesian aristocracy meeting the hard edge of Western commerce and time itself.
Josh Billings, Hiz Sayings
Josh Billings
A deliberate master of homespun cynicism and intentional misspelling, this collection of aphorisms, essays, and observations offers a candid, irreverent look at nineteenth-century American life. It is a work of dry wit and pointed satire, designed to expose the vanities of the age through the lens of a weary,…
Kitty-cat tales
Alice van Leer Carrick
A lonely child discovers comfort in the company of her black kitten, who reveals the hidden history of the feline world through nightly stories shared at her bedside.
Kitty of the Roses
Ralph Henry Barbour
The fragrance of a quiet Southern town and the mystery of a garden wall draw two strangers into a delicate, unfolding courtship.
The Life of the Party
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
HOOK A sophisticated lawyer finds his dignity shredded after a fancy-dress party goes awry, leaving him stranded in New York City wearing nothing but a pair of pink rompers.
The Second Deluge
Garrett Putman Serviss
When a wandering nebula threatens to submerge the world beneath an endless ocean, a visionary scientist constructs a modern ark to save the best of humanity from extinction.
Afterwhiles
James Whitcomb Riley
This collection of verse captures the quiet, persistent pulse of rural American life, finding profound beauty in the domestic, the nostalgic, and the everyday. It is a heartfelt portrait of a lost world where the hearth is the center of the universe.
Dr. Jonathan
Winston Churchill
The great war for democracy ends not on the fields of France, but in the quiet, industrial heart of a New England town where the old order must finally confront the new.
Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman
Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
This collection of literary portraits offers a measured, reflective look at four defining figures of the American tradition, examining the tension between their public legends and their private realities.
Franklin Kane
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
This is a quiet, piercing study of emotional misalignment, where the kindness of the heart is often an obstacle to understanding the desires of the soul.
Georgina's Service Stars
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
Hook A young woman chronicles her coming-of-age during the First World War, finding that the true weight of heroism lies not on the battlefield, but in the quiet, steady courage of those left behind.
Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
Mark Twain
This series of letters offers a biting, unflinching look at the chasm between American democratic ideals and the brutal reality faced by immigrants. Through the eyes of a bewildered observer, the promise of a "Land of the Free" is systematically dismantled by the mechanics of systemic exclusion.
Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany captures the heartbeat of a nation through sentimental fiction, social observations, and urgent reviews. It offers a window into the era’s preoccupation with moral refinement, domestic tragedy, and the quiet struggles of the human spirit.
H.P. Lovecraft, an evaluation
Joseph Payne Brennan
A measured assessment of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary legacy, weighing his structural weaknesses against his undeniable mastery of the short, atmospheric horror tale.
My Actor-Husband: A true story of American stage life
Anonymous
The world of the theater is a fragile, glittering trap, where the pursuit of art frequently demands the sacrifice of the heart and the home. This candid narrative serves as a stark warning to those who believe that stage life and domestic stability can ever truly coexist.
Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches
Constance Fenimore Woolson
A collection of observant, melancholic sketches, these narratives capture the fragile, lingering atmosphere of the American South in the wake of the Civil War.
Sally Dows
Bret Harte
This series of sketches and narratives captures the fractured, post-Civil War American landscape with a sharp, observant eye. It portrays a society in the uneasy process of rebuilding itself, where old loyalties and new ambitions constantly collide.
The Foolish Virgin
Dixon, Thomas, Jr.
This is a story of a sheltered woman’s collision with a raw, unpredictable world, exploring the dangerous allure of impulse and the arduous possibility of personal transformation. It traces the journey of a refined schoolteacher who abandons her careful life for a man of mystery, only to discover that the romantic…
The Portygee
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
The wind-swept shores of Cape Cod provide a harsh, lonely setting for a young man grappling with his identity and a grandfather struggling to reconcile his deep-seated prejudices with the arrival of his newfound kin.
The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
The lives of California’s early Spanish settlers are captured here in a collection of evocative, atmospheric tales set during the sunset of an era. These stories preserve the vanished grace and turbulent passions of a society on the brink of profound change.
The Turtles of Tasman
Jack London
This collection of narratives explores the tension between civilized order and the raw, untamed spirit of adventure, tracing the lives of men who sacrifice comfort for the freedom of the open road and the sea.
The Wives of the Dead: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Two young widows, united in grief after receiving news of their husbands' deaths, face a long, rainy night that tests the fragile boundaries between mourning, memory, and the sudden, disorienting return of hope.
A Modern Cinderella
Louisa May Alcott
HOOK In a house where domestic duty meets the stirrings of an ambitious mind, a quiet young woman finds that the most profound transformations occur not in the world at large, but within the sanctuary of the heart.
Blix
Frank Norris
The unexpected, quiet intensity of a San Francisco romance reveals that the most profound life changes often arrive not with a crash, but in the steady, shared pursuit of a better self.
In the Valley
Harold Frederic
A boy grows to manhood amidst the encroaching shadows of the American Revolution, caught between the vanishing world of his Dutch forebears and the violent upheaval of a new, fractured nation.
Mark Mason's Victory: The Trials and Triumphs of a Telegraph Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A resourceful telegraph messenger navigates poverty and familial betrayal, proving that pluck and sharp business instincts can secure a future for himself and his widowed mother.
Mrs. Tree
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A ninety-one-year-old matriarch orchestrates the lives and loves of her New England village with a sharp tongue and a heart that defies her age. This story explores how the indomitable spirit of an older woman can steer the younger generation toward happiness.
Murder in Any Degree
Owen Johnson
This collection of stories captures the shifting anxieties of early 20th-century life, where social artifice, artistic obsession, and the haunting weight of secrets dictate the fates of the restless. It presents a world where the most profound tragedies often hide behind the mundane.
Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns)
James Whitcomb Riley
A collection of droll sketches, doggerel, and rural observations, this assembly captures the specific, eccentric flavor of American frontier humor at the turn of the twentieth century. It balances the sharp wit of the newspaperman with the sentimental, rhythmic verse of the regional poet, serving as a time capsule…
Pickett's Gap
Homer Greene
This turn-of-the-century tale explores the friction between progress and heritage, centering on a stubborn grandfather and the grandson who bridges the gap between family pride and the changing world.
Prue and I
George William Curtis
A quiet life is not an empty one, for the imagination can travel where the body cannot. This gentle meditation finds the grandeur of the world within the humblest of domestic routines.
Rosalind at Red Gate
Meredith Nicholson
A summer romance entangles a sequestered lake community in a web of family secrets, daring deceptions, and the arrival of a mysterious woman who challenges everything the protagonist knows about truth and identity.
The Bread-winners: A Social Study
John Hay
Labor unrest and social ambition collide in this sharp portrait of a nineteenth-century industrial town, where class lines are drawn as strictly as the borders of a private garden.
The Fat of the Land: The Story of an American Farm
John Williams Streeter
The "Headman" of Four Oaks proves that even an aging city dweller can transform a neglected tract of land into a thriving, profitable factory farm through sheer discipline, careful planning, and a deep respect for the soil.