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American Literature — page 51
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 51 of 101.
Glow Worm
Harlan Ellison
A lone, irradiated survivor leaves a ruined Earth to deliver humanity's final eulogy to the stars.
Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers
Don Marquis
Hermione is a young woman who collects Causes and "Serious Thinkers" with the same frantic enthusiasm others might reserve for stamp collecting or fashion. She is the eternal dilettante, a caricature of early 20th-century intellectual vanity.
Maida's little house
Inez Haynes Gillmore
Summer in a grand New England sanctuary turns six friends into seasoned companions as shared independence, wild woods, and hidden secrets test their bonds.
Marjorie Dean, High School Junior
Josephine Chase
A young woman navigates the social hierarchies and academic pressures of high school, learning that integrity is the only reliable shield against the malice of her peers.
Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge
Nicholas (House name) Carter
Driven by scientific hubris and personal vengeance, an escaped convict uses hypnotic torture to break a famous actress's mind until a master detective steps in.
Samantha in Europe
Marietta Holley
Traveling abroad alongside a high-minded companion and her idiosyncratic husband, a plain-spoken rural matron weighs Old World wonders and structural inequalities against her deep attachment to home.
Sun and Saddle Leather
Badger Clark
The West of the open range comes alive in these verses, where the scent of camp smoke and the creak of saddle leather define a life lived under a vast, untrammeled sky.
The Bachelors: A Novel
William Dana Orcutt
The worlds of refined leisure and deep-seated existential yearning collide in this turn-of-the-century exploration of friendship and self-actualization. A quiet, contemplative journey, it examines the heavy emotional baggage that men of privilege carry in the shadows of their own success.
The Boys of Old Monmouth: A Story of Washington's Campaign in New Jersey in 1778
Everett T. (Everett Titsworth) Tomlinson
A boy rides through the maritime forests of New Jersey as two armies collide, torn between a traitorous foster father and the cause of liberty.
The Common Law
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
A young artist and a spirited model navigate the rigid social hierarchies of early twentieth-century New York, challenging the "common law" of their era that dictates who is fit to marry.
The Complete Works of Artemus Ward
Artemus Ward
American humor often begins with a mask, and few wore one as effectively or as warmly as a traveling showman spinning yarns for a nation on the brink of change. These dispatches offer a singular, wandering portrait of a country through the eyes of a man who claims he has no principles, only a traveling show to…
The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews
John Kendrick Bangs
The Ideal Husband is an elusive, fragile creature, perhaps best preserved under glass like a delicate vase, lest the coarse world inevitably crack his perfection.
The Ivory Tower
Henry James
A sudden legacy plunges an unworldly American artist into the predatory orbit of Newport high society, where every displays of friendship hides a calculating eye on his newly acquired millions.
The Lover's Baedeker and Guide to Arcady
Carolyn Wells
This is a whimsical, satirical guidebook to the imaginary landscape of love, written as a parody of the popular travel Baedekers of the early twentieth century. It serves as a lighthearted, structured map for the lovelorn and the romantic.
The Luminous Face
Carolyn Wells
In a Manhattan parlor, a circle of comfortable men debates whether a murderer can ever truly outwit the law, unaware that one among them is about to try.
The Patagonia
Henry James
The suffocating heat of a Boston summer drives a group of mismatched travelers onto an aging steamship, where the slow crossing becomes a stage for fragile secrets and the collision of two very different worlds.
The Two Vanrevels
Booth Tarkington
In a town where romance and reputation are fragile commodities, a quiet, principled lawyer finds his life entangled with a woman who unknowingly loves him through the masquerade of his deceptive, charming friend.
Williwaw: A Novel
Gore Vidal
Darkness, salt, and the cold iron of a small transport vessel setting out into the treacherous waters off Alaska—this is the arena of Gore Vidal's debut novel. Written while the author was still serving in the Army transport service during World War II, the story captures the quiet friction among men trapped…
Cape Cod Folks
Sarah Pratt McLean Greene
A young teacher leaves home to lead a school on an isolated peninsula, expecting a routine assignment and finding an unpolished world that shakes her sense of self.
Herbert Carter's Legacy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A destitute boy’s quiet integrity and hard labor protect his family from ruin, turning a meager inheritance into lasting prosperity.
Madge Morton's Secret
Amy D. V. Chalmers
Four young women spend a autumn getaway aboard a converted canal-boat, only to find themselves cast adrift on the Chesapeake, marooned, and entangled in naval secrets.
Paste Jewels
John Kendrick Bangs
Young, hopelessly sweet, and completely outmatched by their own domestic staff, a suburban couple learns that running a household requires far more than good intentions.
Phronsie Pepper
Margaret Sidney
The final chapter of a beloved family saga, this volume follows the youngest Pepper sibling as she blossoms into adulthood, navigates a whirlwind romance, and brings her childhood story to a graceful, definitive close.
The Automaton Ear, and Other Sketches
Florence McLandburgh
A scientist constructs a listening trumpet that captures every sound ever uttered in human history, only to find the overwhelming din of the past driving him to the brink of madness.
The Believing Years
Edmund Lester Pearson
Childhood summers in an old New England town unfold through small rebellions, imaginary wars, and the quiet magic of a vanishing world.
The best man
Grace Livingston Hill
Trapped by a mistaken identity at a stranger's altar, a Secret Service agent must protect a vital government secret—and the unwitting bride who accidentally married him.
The Daughter of the Storage: And Other Things in Prose and Verse
William Dean Howells
A young woman stands inside a Manhattan storage facility, trying to recall a long-forgotten childhood encounter while her mother obsessively sorts through old household trunks.
The Iron Woman
Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
Youth, passion, and stubborn pride collide in a industrial river town where four childhood friends discover how easily a single hasty decision can shatter multiple lives.
The Lucky Seventh
Ralph Henry Barbour
A makeshift ball club, a stubborn town patriarch, and a crippling injury conspire against a high school baseball team fighting to keep its home field.
The Pension Beaurepas
Henry James
An observant American student takes lodging in Geneva, where two expatriate families quietly unravel over money, culture, and the freedom to go home.
The Shagganappi
E. Pauline Johnson
Across these stories of the Canadian frontier, young hands hold canoes against furious rapids, skin frostbitten ankles on the trail, and balance the weight of ancestral honor against a rapidly encroaching white world.
Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1913
Unknown
A year of verse published in American magazines moves from quiet personal reflection to the clamor of industrial towns and classical myth.
Aunt Crete's Emancipation
Grace Livingston Hill
A unappreciated, middle-aged maiden aunt receives an unexpected visit from her Western nephew, opening the door to an astonishing transformation.
Barriers Burned Away
Edward Payson Roe
In a city built on raw ambition, a proud artist and an earnest clerk find that their strongest prejudices cannot survive the flames that consume everything around them.
Bread
Charles G. (Charles Gilman) Norris
The working woman’s struggle for independence is a relentless, lifelong labor. This narrative follows a woman’s attempt to balance professional ambition with the demands of a traditional marriage, ultimately examining the cost of autonomy.
Cudjo's Cave
J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge
Caught in the fierce crossfire of the American Civil War in East Tennessee, an idealistic Quaker schoolmaster must choose between non-violent principles and the fight for human liberty against ruthless local secessionists.
Daddy Jake the Runaway, and Short Stories Told after Dark
Joel Chandler Harris
A runaway slave’s escape into a cypress swamp sparks a desperate river journey by two young children seeking to bring him safely home.
Nobody
Susan Warner
A quiet country girl’s modest principles disrupt the artificial boundaries of New York high society when a wealthy bachelor falls in love with her unpretentious heart.
Pippin
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A young man leaves prison determined to repay his debt to society, wandering the New England countryside with a knife-grinding wheel and a heart full of joy.
The Bradys' Chinese Clew
Francis Worcester Doughty
A sudden rainstorm in New York opens a hole in a Chinatown sidewalk, dropping a boy into a subterranean network of secret rooms and launching a race for buried government treasure.
The Lost Road
Richard Harding Davis
A war correspondent dies while the greatest conflict of his era remains unfinished, leaving behind stories of soldiers, idealists, schemers, and reluctant fugitives bound by duty, pride, and love.
The Real Dope
Ring Lardner
An thick-headed American pitcher writes home to his midwestern buddy from the mud, drafty transport ships, and trenches of France during the First World War.
Three Sides of Paradise Green
Augusta Huiell Seaman
A persistent village rumor, a misplaced journal, and a strange French visitor turn three young neighbors into historical detectives in quiet, early twentieth-century New England.
A Book o' Nine Tales
Arlo Bates
This collection of nine short stories, interspersed with brief, whimsical interludes, explores the intersection of the mundane and the mysterious in late 19th-century life. With a sharp eye for social artifice and a penchant for the uncanny, the narratives navigate the delicate boundary between a well-ordered…
Adrift in New York: Tom and Florence Braving the World
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A sinister cousin schemed to rob an elderly merchant of his fortune, but he failed to count on a streetwise newsboy and a brave young woman fighting for the truth.
Dominie Dean: A Novel
Ellis Parker Butler
A young minister arrives at a Mississippi River boomtown to find his life shaped by small-town factionalism, wartime divides, and a lifetime of devotion to a community that eventually forgets him.
Edward MacDowell: A Great American Tone Poet, His Life and Music
John Fielder Porte
A pioneering composer fights for an authentic American classical music, pushing past European traditions to create a fresh sound rooted in his homeland’s natural landscapes and living history.
Highacres
Jane Abbott
When an urban stranger gets lost on Kettle Mountain, a simple mountain girl's long-cherished dream of seeing the world beyond her quiet valley is set in motion.