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American Literature — page 52
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 52 of 101.
John Rawn, Prominent Citizen
Emerson Hough
The rise of a ruthless industrialist collides with the shifting tides of American society, revealing the hollow core of unchecked ambition. This is a study of power, greed, and the human cost of a life measured solely by acquisition.
Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin
Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
An inquisitive American boy explores the wilderness and coastal settlements of turn-of-the-century Alaska alongside a native chief's young son.
Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A native woman's secret marriage to a white hunter ignites a tragic cycle of racial prejudice, hidden identity, and maternal heartbreak across two generations along the early American frontier.
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll
John Greenleaf Whittier
When a violent December storm seals a New England farm household indoors, the quiet routines of snowbound isolation turn a simple hearth into a chapel of memory, storytelling, and enduring affection.
State of the Union Addresses
Thomas Jefferson
Written with calm executive authority, these presidential messages capture an early American republic balancing its grand continental ambitions against volatile European wars and internal financial restraint.
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I
William James Stillman
A boyhood spent beneath the shadow of unyielding New England Puritanism gives way to a wide-ranging adult life spent among art, nature, and the early fires of modern political conflict.
The Ball of Fire
George Randolph Chester
A modern industrial titan schemes to monopolize America's core commodities while a fiery young woman and a fashionable minister clash over the soul and real estate of a historic Manhattan church.
The Daredevil
Maria Thompson Daviess
When a orphaned French aristocrat disguised as her own twin brother sets sail for America to escape wartime peril, she finds herself tangled in political intrigue, military mule contracts, and southern hospitality.
The Daughters of the Little Grey House
Marion Ames Taggart
Growing up brings change to a quiet home as three sisters face the first choices of their adult lives.
The Meccas of the World: The Play of Modern Life in New York, Paris, Vienna, Madrid and London
Ruth Cranston
An intimate travel chronicle contrasts the high-stakes cultural rituals of five global capitals, revealing how each city's unique social theater shapes the modern human spirit.
The Pot Boiler: A Comedy in Four Acts
Upton Sinclair
Hunger and artistic pride collide in a cramped New York tenement as a struggling writer tries to craft a commercial hit while his family starves.
The Shadowy Third, and Other Stories
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
A phantom child steps into the dim light of a New York townhouse, pulling back the veil on human betrayal and the invisible wounds that haunt the living long after the dead are buried.
Added Upon: A Story
Nephi Anderson
A mortal life on earth is merely one single chapter in an eternal progression that stretches from pre-mortal spirit existence to final resurrection and celestial glory.
Six little Bunkers at Mammy June's
Laura Lee Hope
A energetic winter journey carries six energetic siblings from a chilly Boston household to a sunny Southern plantation filled with holiday festivities, local folklore, and woodland misadventures.
The Annals of Ann
Kate Trimble Sharber
A spirited young girl records the comical romances, domestic mishaps, and social absurdities of her small town in a diary she hopes will make her famous.
The Cromptons
Mary Jane Holmes
A young woman arrives in a New England town to teach school, unaware that her hidden family tree connects her directly to its proudest family.
The Dim Lantern
Temple Bailey
A wounded veteran and a young woman bound by duty search for purpose in a changing postwar world.
A Hero of the Pen
E. Werner
A fierce, romantic tale of hidden identities and clashing loyalties, this narrative follows a strong-willed American heiress into the heart of wartime Germany to uncover a family secret. The story explores how love and duty collide when the old world’s rigid traditions encounter the relentless, modern spirit of an…
A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country
T. D. (Thomas Dykes) Beasley
A solitude of whispering pines and sun-baked stone holds the ghosts of gold diggers and writers.
Dark Hollow
Anna Katharine Green
A heavy gate left ajar on an empty lane, a dying servant bleeding over a secret, and a shadowy ravine where an old crime refuses to rest in peace.
Exultations
Ezra Pound
The poet stands at a crossroads of ancient and modern, wielding language like a sharpened blade to carve out a new space for the eternal spirit within a crumbling world.
General Nelson's Scout
Byron A. (Byron Archibald) Dunn
A young Kentuckian becomes an unlikely hero, torn between his unwavering loyalty to the Union and the profound, agonizing bond he shares with his Confederate-sympathizing father during the Civil War.
Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848
Various
This collection offers a portal into the mid-19th-century American literary imagination, blending sentimental fiction, romantic poetry, and the earnest, self-promoting voice of a burgeoning magazine culture.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
An ambitious mid-nineteenth-century literary journal brings together local sketches, satirical dining-table philosophy, political critique, and romantic verse to capture the intellectual crosscurrents of a nation on the brink of profound change.
The Comings of Cousin Ann
Emma Speed Sampson
A spirited young woman living on the margins of her community transforms the lives of her wealthy, reluctant relatives and a stranded, aging cousin through her irrepressible energy and business savvy.
The Common Man
Mack Reynolds
A small team of scientists sets out to find the ultimate average guy, only to learn how quickly absolute power turns common sense into absolute tyranny.
The Girls at Mount Morris
Amanda M. Douglas
Separated in infancy by a train wreck, two very different girls navigate duty and privilege before discovering they are twin sisters.
The Young Salesman
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A young immigrant arrives in New York with nothing but his integrity and a desire to work, eventually overcoming the schemes of a selfish cousin and a dishonest employer.
An Open-Eyed Conspiracy
William Dean Howells
Saratoga Springs, with its grand hotels and bubbling springs, serves as the stage for a subtle, unintended matchmaking scheme that tests the social meddling of a weary vacationing couple.
Bill Nye's Red Book: New Edition
Bill Nye
This collection of essays and sketches serves as a humorous, idiosyncratic chronicle of nineteenth-century American life, navigating the absurdities of social status, politics, and the common struggle for dignity. It offers a window into a bygone era of regional wit, where the author’s keen eye for the peculiar…
Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture
Palmer Cox
A collection of frontier sketches and verse, this volume captures the chaotic, irreverent spirit of a bygone era through tall tales and observational wit. It is a portrait of life on the edge of the map.
Hearts and Masks
Harold MacGrath
The spirit of the unexpected dictates this tale of a masquerade ball, where an impulsive young man finds himself caught in a web of mistaken identity, high-stakes theft, and an unlikely romance.
Port Argent: A Novel
Arthur Colton
Port Argent is a sprawling, soot-stained industrial city built upon the banks of the Muscadine River, where the machinery of commerce, local politics, and human ambition grind together in a cycle that feels both inevitable and indifferent. This is a story of a place where power is brokered in back rooms and where…
Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular
Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond
The man who holds his hat against the wind is searching for a doctor whose reputation for healing is matched only by his reputation for being difficult. It is a story of medical grace found in the most unlikely places.
Right Guard Grant
Ralph Henry Barbour
The path to the varsity lineup is rarely a straight line, but for one determined boy at Alton Academy, it proves to be a season-long education in grit, integrity, and the true cost of victory.
Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself. Vol. 2 (of 2)
Robert Montgomery Bird
A man discovers the uncanny power to inhabit the bodies of the recently deceased, only to find that every new life brings its own set of inescapable miseries.
The Black Eagle Mystery
Geraldine Bonner
The Black Eagle Mystery is a classic puzzle of urban suspense, where the shifting loyalties of a New York office staff mirror the dark, labyrinthine secrets of a financial titan.
The Girls of Hillcrest Farm
Amy Bell Marlowe
When their father falls ill and their family fortune vanishes, two resourceful sisters trade city life for an abandoned mountain farm, only to find that reclaiming their future requires solving a persistent, generations-old mystery.
The Mail Carrier
Harry Castlemon
A cautionary tale of envy and consequence, this story follows a misguided boy who steals a neighbor’s hard-earned money and embarks on a flight from justice that teaches him the hollow cost of his ambition.
The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire
Dixon, Thomas, Jr.
The political bitterness of the American South during Reconstruction serves as the backdrop for this intense, character-driven drama of personal honor and societal collapse. It traces the final gasps of the Ku Klux Klan and the subsequent legal entanglements that define the era’s turbulent transition.
Knock three-one-two
Fredric Brown
A city gripped by terror finds its fates entwined when a desperate gambler and a lethal predator navigate the same dark streets. Fear is the only constant in a neighborhood where every knock on a door carries the weight of life or death.
Mam' Linda
Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben
A young lawyer risks his political future and his life to defend the innocent, navigating a treacherous landscape of mob violence and deep-seated prejudice in the post-Reconstruction South.
Nothing But the Truth
Frederic Stewart Isham
A wager to speak only the truth for three weeks transforms a reckless young man’s life, turning social mishaps into an unexpected path toward maturity and love.
Patty's Perversities
Arlo Bates
This nuanced portrait of New England provincial life captures the tangled intersection of social ambition, economic anxiety, and the volatile emotional landscapes of courtship. It serves as a study in how rigid social expectations collide with individual pride.
Sleeping Fires: a Novel
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
HOOK A stifled young wife attempts to liberate her intellectual hunger in the rigid social landscape of 1860s San Francisco, leading to a profound, destructive, and ultimately transformative collision with a charismatic outsider.
The Hallowell Partnership
Katharine Holland Brown
A brother and sister discover that the most difficult of lives—one defined by illness and isolation—can be transformed into a shared adventure, provided they are willing to work for it.
The Little Regiment, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War
Stephen Crane
The fog of battle obscures more than just the field; it hides the small, splintered souls of the men tasked with holding the line. These stories strip away the glory of war to reveal the raw, shaking nerves of those caught in its machinery.
The Wood Fire in No. 3
Francis Hopkinson Smith
The fireplace is the beating heart of a New York studio building, drawing a circle of friends together to share the stories that define their lives. This collection of linked tales captures the warmth and camaraderie of a vanishing bohemian world.