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American Literature — page 40
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 40 of 101.
Bound to Rise
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
An earnest fifteen-year-old farm boy sets out to clear his family’s debt, discovering that grit, steady night study, and strict integrity are the surest ladder out of rural poverty.
Gideon's Band: A Tale of the Mississippi
George Washington Cable
Along the glittering lengths of the antebellum Mississippi, a fierce rivalry between two steamboat dynasties gives way to the perilous magic of first love and the silent onset of a deadly plague.
Hempfield: A Novel
David Grayson
A small-town newspaper in Westmoreland County becomes the quiet center where an unlikely group of idealists, practical hustlers, and wandering souls find purpose, romance, and one another.
Liberty and the news
Walter Lippmann
Public decisions now depend on information filtered through an unregulated media apparatus, turning the protection of accurate reporting into democracy's most urgent moral and political test.
Patchwork: A Story of 'The Plain People'
Anna Balmer Myers
A spirited young girl from Pennsylvania’s "plain people" dreams of escaping her quiet, restrictive life for the sophistication of the city, only to discover the true value of home and duty.
Tennessee's Partner
Bret Harte
A gold miner in the California hills offers his entire life savings to buy his partner out of a hanging, then quietly builds a flower-draped coffin when the law refuses his gift.
The Redskins
James Fenimore Cooper
Disguised as a itinerant German pedlar on his own ancestral estate, a returning landlord confronts a secretive tenant revolt aiming to strip his family of their legal property rights.
The Return of the O'Mahony: A Novel
Harold Frederic
An American Civil War deserter impersonates an heir to an Irish estate, claiming the title and winning the devotion of a remote village.
The River Prophet
Raymond S. (Raymond Smiley) Spears
Down the churning brown currents of the Mississippi, a mountain preacher, a runaway wife, and a solitary river observer float into one another’s lives to discover freedom, redemption, and identity.
The Story of Old Fort Loudon
Charles Egbert Craddock
Over shadowed peaks and deep mountain gaps, a handful of settlers and British soldiers march into the wilderness, unaware that they are walking straight into a deadly trap of imperial ambition and tribal fury.
The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A wanderer searches the globe for three signs of an exalted destiny, only to find every promised miracle waiting in his native village.
The Visioning: A Novel
Susan Glaspell
A spoiled young woman steps off a golf course to stop a stranger from jumping into a river, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that dismantles her pristine social world.
Their Wedding Journey
William Dean Howells
A middle-aged New York couple turns a delayed honeymoon into an effortless masterclass in the art of observing everyday life.
An eye for an eye
Clarence Darrow
A doomed Chicago switchman sits in his jail cell on the eve of his execution, recounting the avalanche of poverty, debt, and desperation that led to his fatal crime.
An Original Belle
Edward Payson Roe
A young woman's resolve to live a meaningful life transforms her from a self-absorbed society belle into a steadying force for the men fighting on both sides of the Civil War.
Bylow Hill
George Washington Cable
A quiet New England village becomes the stage for a tragic tangle of unspoken love, mistaken devotion, and consuming jealousy.
Katy Gaumer
Elsie Singmaster
An ambitious Pennsylvania Dutch girl sacrifices her own dreams of higher education, only to discover that true maturity means cultivating her native soil.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day
Rebecca Harding Davis
A quiet, bone-deep story of mid-nineteenth-century American industrial life, examining how self-sacrifice and lofty ambition can warp into their own form of pride.
Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911:: Introduction and Bibliography
Montrose Jonas Moses
Stagecraft transforms printed pages into living theatre, preserving the evolving heartbeat of American culture across decades of artistic ambition.
That Fortune
Charles Dudley Warner
Courting a high-society heiress means navigating the brutal dynamics of Gilded Age wealth, where fortunes are forged through cold financial ambition and erased overnight by the ruthless forces of Wall Street.
The Conquest of Canaan
Booth Tarkington
A young outcast and a disgraced heiress fight for redemption in an Indiana town ruled by hypocrisy, vindictiveness, and long-buried financial secrets.
The Seeker
Harry Leon Wilson
A small boy chooses a striped candy stick over a illustrated Bible, setting off a quiet, lifelong rift between a dogmatic grandfather and a child born to ask uncomfortable questions.
The Uphill Climb
B. M. Bower
A hungover cowboy wakes from a blackout to discover he married an unknown woman during a drunken brawl, forcing him onto a hard road of sobriety and self-discovery to prove his worth.
Torchy
Sewell Ford
A sharp-tongued, red-headed New York boy hustles his way through the corporate ladder, dropping quick-witted barbs while solving the absurd personal dilemmas of rich executives.
Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure
Eustace Hale Ball
A innocent girl lured into a nightmare, a hypocritical reformer pulling the strings, and an honest rookie cop fighting to save her—this 1914 crime drama exposes the shadowed gears of New York’s underworld.
Behind the Green Door
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
A young reporter’s ski trip turns into a dangerous investigation when she discovers a smuggling ring operating behind the doors of a luxury mountain hotel.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October 1852
Various
This nineteenth-century periodical offers a fascinating, varied window into the Victorian imagination, blending scientific inquiry, moralizing fiction, and romantic poetry within the pages of a popular monthly magazine.
Love After Marriage
Caroline Lee Hentz
The pursuit of deep, lasting affection often requires individuals to look beyond their own pride, vanity, and superficial judgments. These stories reveal the complex, often painful transformation of the heart after the initial illusions of romance have faded.
Molly Make-Believe
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
A sickbed becomes a theater of unexpected romance when a lonely invalid subscribes to a whimsical letter-writing service and falls for the imagination behind the ink.
More Portmanteau Plays
Stuart Walker
These three plays capture the essence of a visionary theatrical experiment, blending Japanese folklore, modern social comedy, and the poignant struggles of youth to define the spirit of early twentieth-century American drama.
The Barrel Mystery
William J. (William James) Flynn
A chilling, firsthand account of early twentieth-century organized crime, this narrative follows the relentless efforts of federal agents to dismantle a murderous counterfeiting syndicate operating within New York’s Italian immigrant communities.
The Wire Tappers
Arthur Stringer
A former convict and a quick-witted woman forge an unlikely partnership in the high-stakes world of urban espionage, where secrets are stolen through the wires of a changing city. This gripping tale of crime and redemption follows two outsiders who attempt to outmaneuver their pasts while navigating the treacherous…
An Artist in Crime
Rodrigues Ottolengui
A gentleman detective finds himself ensnared in a web of shifting identities and high-stakes gamesmanship, where the truth is never as simple as the evidence suggests.
Gentle Julia
Booth Tarkington
This is a sympathetic, sharp-eyed study of a small-town social orbit, capturing the absurdities of romantic obsession and the meddling mischief of a precocious teenager. It is a work of ironic observation that finds humor in the high drama of the young and the weary resignation of their elders.
Horace Chase
Constance Fenimore Woolson
A wealthy, powerful businessman marries a young, impulsive Southern woman in post-Civil War America, setting the stage for a quiet, psychological collision between his pragmatic world and her restless, unanchored spirit.
Jimmy Kirkland and the Plot for a Pennant
Hugh S. (Hugh Stuart) Fullerton
This story captures the breathless, high-stakes drama of professional baseball at the turn of the century, where the love of the game meets the grittiness of urban corruption.
The Funny Philosophers, or Wags and Sweethearts. A Novel
George Yellott
A group of eccentric, pseudo-intellectual young men embarks on a rambling, high-spirited quest for fortune and romance, only to find that life—and their own absurd ambitions—rarely conform to their theories.
Van Bibber and Others
Richard Harding Davis
The world of the late nineteenth-century gentleman is a stage, and those who inhabit it are often merely players performing for an audience of their peers.
A House Party with the Tucker Twins
Nell Speed
The Tucker Twins and their spirited circle of friends escape to an old country estate for an unforgettable fortnight of laughter, mischief, and gentle romance. This story captures a vanishing world of youthful high jinks and the enduring bonds of friendship.
Capitola's Peril: A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand'
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
This sequel follows the irrepressible Capitola Black as she navigates a web of villainous plots, secret identities, and frontier dangers. It is a high-spirited exploration of courage, redemption, and the ultimate triumph of truth over darkness.
Doctor Hathern's daughters
Mary Jane Holmes
HOOK Two sisters navigate the lingering shadows of the American Civil War and the volatility of the heart in a sprawling, character-driven story set against the backdrop of an old Virginia homestead.
Gifts of Genius: A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors
Unknown
This collection preserves the mid-nineteenth-century tradition of the "gift book"—an elegant, miscellaneous volume designed to offer readers a diverse sampling of the era's literary talent. It brings together prose and poetry from prominent American writers of the 1850s, serving as a time capsule of their aesthetic…
In Beaver Cove and Elsewhere
Matt (Martha Jane) Crim
In these vivid, earth-bound narratives, the rugged landscapes of Georgia become the silent, watchful witnesses to the intense passions, feuds, and long-buried secrets of its people.
Jerome, A Poor Man: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
A young man commits his life to an impossible vow of poverty, only to find that the forces of love and grace demand he finally accept help from those he once scorned.
Kilo
Ellis Parker Butler
The persistent book agent Eliph' Hewlitt arrives in the small town of Kilo armed with an encyclopedia and an unshakeable belief that every human problem—from courtship to cooking—can be solved by the right page. This lighthearted tale follows his gentle, persistent efforts to win the heart of local woman Sally…
Nature's Serial Story
Edward Payson Roe
An invitation to find stability, health, and romance in the rhythmic passage of the seasons. This is a story of how the land shapes the human heart.
Personality Plus: Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock
Edna Ferber
The narrative follows a successful businesswoman and her ambitious son as they navigate the evolving demands of the early twentieth-century advertising and garment industries. It captures the tension between professional tradition and the "modern" drive for rapid advancement.
Sanctuary
Edith Wharton
A mother’s quiet moral vigilance becomes the conscience of her son as he faces a devastating temptation that threatens his integrity.