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American Literature — page 41
3,151 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 41 of 66.
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.
Paul Bunyan and His Loggers
Otis T. Howd
In the snowbound bunkhouses of the Lake States, lonely lumberjacks forged a giant to match the overwhelming wilderness they were sent to conquer.
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.
A Chance Acquaintance
William Dean Howells
A young woman from a small Western town falls into an unexpected romance on a river voyage, only to discover how far love can stretch across social lines.
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.
The Tree of Appomattox
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
Two cousins, divided by the tragic rupture of a nation, navigate the brutal, closing chapters of the American Civil War with unwavering loyalty to their separate causes.
Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman
William L. (William Leete) Stone
A well-meaning dunce stumbles through every career open to an nineteenth-century gentleman, losing every small fortune he touches to vanity, bad advice, and terrible marriages.
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.
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.
Red Pepper Burns
Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond
HOOK A red-headed, sharp-tongued physician struggles to reconcile his fiery temperament with his tender devotion to his patients and the woman he eventually hopes to marry.
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 Heart's Kingdom
Maria Thompson Daviess
A world-weary woman flees city cynicism for her Southern hometown, only to confront her own deepest fears about love, class, and spiritual surrender.
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.