Free summaries
American Literature — page 5
3,593 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 5 of 75.
Janet of the Dunes
Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock
A wild coastal storm, a long-hidden family secret, and a spirited young woman navigating love and duty define this classic tale of the Long Island shore.
Glory of Youth
Temple Bailey
A sheltered, mourning girl and a wealthy aviator yield to impulsive romantic choices, only to discover that true devotion demands sacrifice, self-knowledge, and the courage to face life's storms together.
A Small Boy and Others
Henry James
Memory converts the fleeting noise of a nineteenth-century Manhattan boyhood into the vast, luminous architecture of an artist’s conscious beginning.
Americans All: Stories of American Life of To-Day
Unknown
A rich portrait of early twentieth-century America unfolds across a collection of short stories that celebrate the humor, hardship, and common humanity uniting a diverse nation.
Anthem
Ayn Rand
A young man risks his life in a dark, collective future where even the word "I" has been erased from human memory.
An American Suffragette
Isaac Newton Stevens
A woman’s march through Manhattan sparks a romance that soon becomes bound up in a high-stakes murder trial, testing both political ideals and human devotion.
Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving
A genial, lazy villager wanders into the misty Catskill Mountains to escape his wife's sharp tongue, only to fall into a magical twenty-year slumber that spans a revolutionary transformation of his entire world.
Patty's Success
Carolyn Wells
A wealthy young woman returning from an idyllic European tour faces the quiet discomfort of her own privilege and vows to earn her own wages to aid an impoverished artist.
Skippy Bedelle: His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete Man of the World
Owen Johnson
A fifteen-year-old prep school student navigates the agonizing transition from a woman-hating urchin into a self-proclaimed man of the world through a series of grand inventions, romantic disasters, and absurd social rivalries.
The Short-story
Unknown
A beginner's window into American and British fiction, this anthology traces the evolution of short prose from fireside folk legend to the psychological, moral, and suspenseful narratives of the nineteenth century.
Mr. Opp
Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
A small-town dreamer with grand ambitions steps up to carry a heavy burden of family duty, refusing to lose his optimism or his dignity even as his wild enterprises collapse around him.
Clematis
Bertha B. (Bertha Browning) Cobb
A neglected city child runs away from her sterile surroundings, only to find that an unexpected journey into the country unlocks the hidden truth of her heritage.
East of Eden
Isa Glenn
A fragile talent destroyed by the crushing friction between artistic ambition and societal expectations.
In The Boyhood of Lincoln: A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk
Hezekiah Butterworth
Set across the rugged frontier of early nineteenth-century Indiana and Illinois, this historical romance traces how the compassionate principles of a wandering schoolmaster and the quiet integrity of a young, unpolished Abraham Lincoln shape a frontier community.
The Flaw in the Sapphire
Charles M. Snyder
A eccentric young man who buys sold-clothes finds serialized pages of a oriental mystery on discarded shirt collars, setting off a dual story that moves between a Philadelphia boarding house and an Indian palace.
The Escape of Mr. Trimm: His Plight and other Plights
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
An unpunished crime, a desperate flight, and an inescapable set of steel shackles test the absolute limits of human endurance.
Peak and Prairie: From a Colorado Sketch-book
Anna Fuller
Against the dramatic backdrop of Pikes Peak, Eastern health-seekers and local pioneers cross paths in a frontier town where high mountain air reshapes ambitions, romances, and moral resolve.
The Fire People
Ray Cummings
An invading force arrives in silver vessels, wielding a light that burns whole towns to ash and forcing humanity to fight for its very home.
Katie Robertson
Margaret E. Winslow
Faithful duty transforms the humble realities of factory labor into a quiet, purposeful journey toward moral growth and spiritual grace.
The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York
Edward Eggleston
A well-meaning young woman in Gilded Age New York embraces the practice of faith-healing, throwing her high-society engagement into turmoil as class expectations, religious zeal, and modern medical science collide.
The Brown Mouse
Herbert Quick
An idealistic Iowa farm-hand takes over a troubled country schoolhouse, upending traditional education by teaching real-world agriculture, battling conservative locals, and winning the heart of his former rival.
The Promise: A Tale of the Great Northwest
James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx
A man cast out by the city discovers his true strength in the brutal North, where the cold tests his soul as fiercely as his body.
Poems: Household Edition
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A retreat from the frantic demands of commerce and public debate reveals a universe governed by quiet, inescapable spiritual laws. Here, the wild wood and the private hearth offer a lasting sanctuary for the human soul.
Margaret Montfort
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A peaceful summer at an elegant New England country estate turns into a delicate exercise in tact when an earnest young woman must manage a household of scheming relatives and wild children.
Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country
Joel Chandler Harris
Beneath the surface of an ordinary plantation spring lies a hidden country where talking animals, clever tricksters, and fairy-tale folk gather on a porch to share timeless stories.
A Tar-Heel Baron
Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke) Smith
Driven into exile by false accusations back in Germany, an aristocrat attempts to clear his disgraced family name while forging an austere new farm life among the close-knit communities of the North Carolina mountains.
A Spoil of Office: A Story of the Modern West
Hamlin Garland
A rustic Midwestern farmhand hears a gifted female reformer speak and sets out to transform himself, rising through local and national politics while staying true to his roots.
In Our Town
William Allen White
Through the front window of a small-town newspaper office, the human comedy unfolds in a tangle of petty rivalries, quiet nobility, and everyday heartbreak.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
An individual's conscience owes no automatic allegiance to an unjust state. True freedom requires breaking the law when obedience transforms a citizen into an active accomplice to moral wrong.
Peggy Stewart at School
Gabrielle E. (Gabrielle Emilie) Jackson
Southern hospitality, military charm, and schoolgirl spirit converge in Gabrielle E. Jackson's classic story of a young heiress finding her footing among friends.
The Wind Before the Dawn
Dell H. Munger
Out on the unforgiving Kansas prairie, a young woman endures homesteading hardship and marital tyranny to fight for her legal, financial, and personal independence.
Martin Eden
Jack London
A muscle-bound sailor falls for an aristocratic woman, vows to conquer her world through literature, and discovers that the summit of middle-class success is entirely hollow.
The Lure of the Mask
Harold MacGrath
A singing voice cuts through a chilly Manhattan fog, drawing a young New Yorker into a globe-trotting pursuit of a mysterious masked stranger across Italy.
Where the Souls of Men are Calling
Credo Fitch Harris
In a small town where the shadow of war seems three thousand miles away, a young man's private terror meets the relentless call of public duty. Credo Fitch Harris constructs a poignant study of hidden cowardice transformed into hardened courage on the ruined battlefields of France.
Flint: His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes
Maud Wilder Goodwin
A man whose sharp intellect and reserved manners mask a deep capacity for devotion must learn to look past his own cynicism before he can win the woman he loves.
True to His Home: A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin
Hezekiah Butterworth
A tale of Benjamin Franklin's boyhood, weaving fact and fiction to illuminate his early years.
Elkan Lubliner, American
Montague Glass
A ambitious young immigrant works his way from the cutting room floor of a garment firm to full partnership in New York’s competitive cloak-and-suit trade.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
An isolated estate, a decaying dynasty, and a lingering sense of doom set the stage for an unforgettable tale of psychological unraveling.
Tom, The Bootblack
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A young street boy works his way from hardship to independence, using his wits, honest labor, and unyielding self-reliance to survive in the city.
Lady Luck
Hugh Wiley
A veteran of the Great War, his wandering mascot goat, and a pocketful of dice navigate a chaotic post-armistice America where fortune shifts with every roll.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce
A Southern planter stands on a northern Alabama bridge, a noose tight around his neck. As the drop falls, time stretches, opening a desperate path toward escape and home.
As A Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a Friend at Home
Unknown
Observations made by an educated Chinese traveler reveal the quirks, hypocrisies, and unexpected charms of late nineteenth-century American society.
Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales
Ruth McEnery Stuart
A small boy cuts the pockets from his trousers to prove he has stopped stealing, setting the tone for a collection of tales about quiet redemption, humble generosity, and resilience.
Mr. Stubbs's Brother: A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler'
James Otis
A boy’s return from the circus should have been a quiet homecoming, but in a small Maine village, memories of the big top are not so easily laid to rest.
The Witch of Salem
John R. (John Roy) Musick
This historical novel dramatizes the dark hysteria of late 17th-century Salem, framing the witchcraft trials as the inevitable, tragic fruit of institutionalized religious bigotry and unchecked power.
Madge Morton's Victory
Amy D. V. Chalmers
A young girl's determination leads to a life-changing discovery and a victory over fate.
A Beautiful Alien
Julia Magruder
This is a story of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage who finds an unexpected soulmate. It explores the tension between duty and personal happiness in the rigid social landscape of the turn of the century.
Sonnie-Boy's People
James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
These tales of the sea and the men who navigate its moral and physical depths capture a vanishing era of rugged maritime adventure and quiet, desperate heroism.