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American Literature — page 39
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 39 of 101.
The Golden House
Charles Dudley Warner
The quest for meaning in a gilded age often leads to empty rooms, yet those who seek wealth as a shield against life’s fragility frequently find it to be a hollow armor.
The House of Torchy
Sewell Ford
A sharp-witted New York City couple navigates the complexities of early married life, blending domestic adjustments with high-stakes corporate maneuvering and patriotic duty during the First World War.
The New Penelope, and Other Stories and Poems
Frances Fuller Victor
HOOK This collection of stories and poetry captures the raw, precarious spirit of Pacific Coast frontier life, where social norms falter and individual survival remains a constant, hard-won struggle.
Aunt Jo's scrap-bag, Volume 4
Louisa May Alcott
A collection of stories celebrates the transition from childhood curiosity to purposeful, compassionate adulthood. These vignettes capture the quiet struggles and small triumphs of girls and boys finding their way in a rapidly changing world.
For Woman's Love
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A self-made governor and his childhood sweetheart face a brutal separation on their wedding day, triggering a long, complex journey toward truth and reconciliation.
Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches
Joel Chandler Harris
These sketches capture the quiet, often tragic textures of life in post-Civil War Georgia, where the echoes of conflict and the weight of history press heavily upon ordinary people. The book moves through a series of interconnected narratives, blending local color with an unflinching look at the social scars of a…
Helen Grant's Schooldays
Amanda M. Douglas
This narrative follows a bright, ambitious young woman as she escapes the stifling limitations of rural drudgery to pursue a formal education, eventually finding her own voice and purpose.
Judge Elbridge
Opie Percival Read
A retired judge faces the shattering realization that his own flesh and blood has betrayed him, only to discover that the machinery of justice is less powerful than the capacity to forgive.
Judith of Blue Lake Ranch
Jackson Gregory
A headstrong young woman inherits a vast cattle ranch, only to find it beset by saboteurs, forcing her to rely on a mysterious, hardened horse foreman to survive the wilderness.
Mr. Incoul's Misadventure
Edgar Saltus
HOOK A wealthy man of quiet habits marries a young woman whose heart belongs to another, setting the stage for a cold, calculated revenge that unfolds in the shadows of European high society.
Quarter-Back Bates
Ralph Henry Barbour
A talented high school athlete discovers that prep-school success requires more than raw ability; it demands the humility to learn, the discipline to follow orders, and the character to weather his own mistakes.
Talbot's Angles
Amy Ella Blanchard
A young woman’s quiet life in the Maryland countryside is upended when a mysterious stranger arrives, claiming an ancestral right to her family’s historic home.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
This issue of a venerable American literary magazine offers a sprawling, intellectual window into the nineteenth-century mind, capturing the era’s urgent debates, travel obsessions, and evolving narrative styles.
The Inventions of the Idiot
John Kendrick Bangs
A man of relentless, whimsical imagination holds court at a boardinghouse, proposing bizarre solutions to everyday inconveniences. His inventive spirit turns the breakfast table into a theater of witty, argumentative debate.
The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky
Everett MacDonald
A young man is caught in a violent cycle of mountain vengeance, his life shaped by the blood-debts of his kin and the haunting, rugged wilderness of Kentucky.
A Night in Acadie
Kate Chopin
Restless hearts search for freedom, duty, or love across the quiet bayous, bustling towns, and sun-bathed fields of nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Carolyn of the Corners
Ruth Belmore Endicott
Sent away from her city home when her parents are reported lost at sea, a little girl and her faithful mongrel arrive in a small rural town, where her unconscious warmth slowly melts the long-held grudges of her guardians and neighbours.
Cy Whittaker's Place
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
The Cy Whittaker place is more than a house; it is the center of a life that finally feels like home. This novel captures the quiet, salt-sprayed rhythm of Cape Cod at the turn of the century, following a retired sea captain who finds unexpected purpose through an unlikely adoption. It is a story of community,…
From the Housetops
George Barr McCutcheon
A young woman chooses security over love, marrying a dying millionaire to secure her future, only to find herself trapped in a haunting moral struggle alongside the surgeon who once hoped to be her husband.
People of the Whirlpool: From The Experience Book of a Commuter's Wife
Mabel Osgood Wright
A gentle, observant woman living in a changing countryside finds her quiet life challenged by an encroaching, wealthy urban elite. This is a story of maintaining one’s roots in the face of shifting social tides.
Scorn of Women: A Play In Three Acts
Jack London
In the freeze of 1897 Dawson, an Eldorado gold king tries to run off with a Hungarian adventurer, sparking a secret web of social plotting to save a young bride's future.
The Just and the Unjust
Vaughan Kester
A ruined man faces the gallows for a murder he did not commit, while the only people who know the truth are silenced by fear, greed, and the weight of their own past failures.
Will Bradley, His Chap Book: An account, in the words of the dean of American typographers, of his graphic arts adventures
Will Bradley
A boyhood spent foraging for firewood in Michigan mining country leads to an extraordinary creative career shaping the visual language of twentieth-century American publishing.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 2
Mark Twain
A light-hearted American traveler traces the length of Australia by sea, rail, and carriage, marveling at its phosphorescent waters, strange wildlife, and booming frontier cities.
High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of Connecticut
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A guileless Connecticut farm boy encounters the absurdities of nineteenth-century Manhattan, sending back a stream of observations to his hometown deacon.
Love-Songs of Childhood
Eugene Field
A child's nocturnal imagination bridges the fragile gap between domestic warmth, wild outdoor play, and the inevitable, quiet march of growing up.
Or Your Money Back
Randall Garrett
A small plastic box with no wires inside wins fortune after fortune at a Las Vegas roulette table, forcing a court to decide whether wishing hard for a number can be called a crime.
Robinetta
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
An English heart hidden in a bright New England skin arrives on a cold Devonshire doorstep, looking for the warmth of family and finding only frozen decorum.
Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land
Charles Godfrey Leland
This collection of verse captures the vanishing spirit of the nineteenth-century sailor, blending authentic maritime folklore with the tall tales of a wandering adventurer. It preserves the salty, cynical, and superstitious voice of the men who once powered the world’s sailing ships.
The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life
John Kendrick Bangs
Small-town pretension, marital friction, and social absurdity meet gentle satirical affection across fifteen vignette-like tales.
The Court of Boyville
William Allen White
Where the town ends and the cornfields begin, boys rule a kingdom built on mud, pride, and ancient, unwritten laws.
The End of the World: A Love Story
Edward Eggleston
A tender, sharp-eyed romance of 1840s Indiana, where religious fanaticism and petty greed threaten to tear two young lovers apart before the world even comes to an end.
The Old Soak, and Hail And Farewell
Don Marquis
A hilarious, heart-wrenching lament for the saloon, this book captures an era when Prohibition turned ordinary drinkers into nostalgic philosophers overnight.
The Silver Poppy
Arthur Stringer
Driven by ambition and a hunger for artistic prestige, a young Southern woman in New York repeatedly steals an unsophisticated author's original manuscripts to publish under her own name, leaving them both entangled in deceit.
The Tinder-Box
Maria Thompson Daviess
A young woman returns from Europe to her small Tennessee town pledged to court men on equal terms, setting off a quiet revolution in her romantic community.
The Undercurrent
Robert Grant
A abandoned wife struggles against poverty and strict religious dogma in early-twentieth-century industrial America, choosing human love and real life over an unyielding, high-society ideal.
Wanted: A Cook: Domestic Dialogues
Alan Dale
Newly married and determined to preserve their refined lifestyle, Archie and Letitia Fairfax discover that no amount of classical scholarship can save them from the brutal realities of hiring a competent cook.
An American tragedy, v. 2
Theodore Dreiser
A young man's desperate ambition collides with a fatal secret, triggering a relentless search for truth in the shadow of American high society.
An Outcast
F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Beneath the gloss of antebellum respectable society lies a dark network of hypocrisy, where the vulnerable are cast aside and vice finds protection behind wealth and status.
Carter, and Other People
Don Marquis
A shadow falls between who people are and what they present to the world.
Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life
Frank H. (Frank Hamilton) Spearman
The iron rails of the West End stretch across desert and canyon, where life hinges on the swing of a lantern, a split-second order, or a heart that refuses to yield.
Making Money
Owen Johnson
A young man steps off a train into Gilded Age New York, entirely untroubled by money, and sets out to discover whether a life built on pure ambition can survive the machinery of Wall Street.
Phemie Frost's Experiences
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A sharp-eyed New England spinster tours the Gilded Age high-society circuit, skewering urban pretension with iron-clad mountain sense and unstoppable romantic ambition.
Potash & Perlmutter: Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures
Montague Glass
A volatile partnership in New York's garment district relies on fierce arguments, bad investments, and an unspoken mutual loyalty to survive.
Sonny, a Christmas Guest
Ruth McEnery Stuart
This is a quiet, meditative portrait of a father’s profound devotion to his son, told through the lens of a life deeply rooted in the slow, rhythmic traditions of a rural community. It captures the transition from one generation to the next, framing the mundane joys of family life as a form of sacred stewardship.
State of the Union Addresses of Barack Obama, 2009-2016
Barack Obama
Across eight years of executive addresses, a nation confronts economic collapse, foreign wars, and political division, constantly searching for common ground.
Sylvia's Marriage: A Novel
Upton Sinclair
A privileged Southern woman discovers that her husband carries a devastating secret, prompting her to abandon her elite position and challenge the hypocrisies of her gilded society.
A Calendar of Sonnets
Helen Hunt Jackson
The turning of the seasons serves as a mirror for the human heart, transforming the cyclical rhythm of the year into a meditative journey of endurance, loss, and quiet transformation.