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American Literature — page 54
3,593 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 54 of 75.
The Delegate from Venus
Henry Slesar
A Washington reporter stumbles upon a story of extraterrestrial contact, only to discover that the threat to global peace may be more human—and closer to home—than he ever imagined.
The Last American: A Fragment from The Journal of Khan-li, Prince of Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy
John Ames Mitchell
A Persian admiral discovers the ruins of a fallen, forgotten superpower, only to encounter the final remnants of its people in a tragic, violent final act.
The Poisoned Pen
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
This collection of mystery stories follows the exploits of Craig Kennedy, a university professor who applies the rigorous methods of laboratory science to solve the most perplexing crimes of early 20th-century New York.
The Story of a Play: A Novel
William Dean Howells
The creative friction between an idealistic playwright and a vain, mercurial star reveals how artistic integrity often survives only through the compromises of the theater.
The Story of Glass
Sara Ware Bassett
The Story of Glass weaves together the history of a sophisticated craft and the personal journey of an orphaned girl finding her place in a world of family, industry, and home.
They Looked and Loved
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A young woman trapped in a loveless marriage struggles to escape the clutches of a mysterious miser, only to be drawn into a web of deceit, shipwrecks, and hidden identities.
A Face Illumined
Edward Payson Roe
The story of a young woman’s moral evolution, this narrative follows a talented but cynical artist who discovers that human beauty requires the inner light of the soul to be truly seen.
A Prairie Infanta
Eva Wilder Brodhead
A lonely Colorado woman adopts a grieving child, unknowingly tethering her quiet life to the volatile fortunes of a wandering father.
Cinderella, and Other Stories
Richard Harding Davis
A collection of five stories captures the restless energy of the late nineteenth century, tracing the lives of urban dreamers and accidental adventurers as they collide with an rapidly modernizing world.
Five Little Peppers and their Friends
Margaret Sidney
The Pepper family’s circle of warmth expands as the children reach out to include lonely outsiders and struggling peers, proving that kindness is the strongest bridge between different worlds.
Hildegarde's Home
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A young woman and her mother leave the grief of a city home for a quiet, sun-drenched life in the country, where they find friendship, purpose, and the unexpected joy of rebuilding a community.
Miss America
Alexander Black
The American woman is an enigma of evolving independence, a figure whose public image is molded by illustrators as much as her private reality is defined by her own burgeoning sense of agency.
Père Antoine's Date-Palm
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A solitary date-palm towers over a New Orleans street, standing as a living monument to a love that defied the boundaries of the cloth and the finality of the grave. This quiet legend traces the life of a priest whose earthly devotion becomes anchored in a tree.
Revelations of a Wife: The Story of a Honeymoon
Adele Garrison
The honeymoon is rarely the quiet idyll promised in storybooks, especially when the partners are as volatile and headstrong as these two newlyweds. This is a story of how a marriage is forged in the fire of misunderstandings, jealousy, and unexpected crises.
Riley Love-Lyrics
James Whitcomb Riley
The heart carries its own history in the quiet, fragile songs we keep when the world goes still. These verses trace the long shadow that memory casts over a life, transforming youthful passion into the bittersweet wisdom of age.
Riley Songs of Home
James Whitcomb Riley
The path home is not a map, but a memory, and this collection serves as a compass for the soul searching for the sweetness of its own beginnings. It offers a gentle, enduring bridge between the frantic present and the quiet, radiant landscape of the past.
Samantha at Coney Island, and a Thousand Other Islands
Marietta Holley
A sharp-witted woman maneuvers through the absurdity of summer travel, keeping a watchful, loving eye on her husband’s persistent fascination with the chaotic spectacle of Coney Island.
The Attaché
Thomas Chandler Haliburton
A sharp-tongued colonial observer navigates the stiff, formal hierarchies of Victorian England, finding that the Old World is as much a performance as the new one is a frontier.
The Azure Rose: A Novel
Reginald Wright Kauffman
A struggling American artist living in Paris finds his life upended when a mysterious, beautiful woman moves into the room directly across the hall.
The Camp Fire Girls on the Field of Honor
Margaret Vandercook
A group of idealistic American girls ventures into the heart of wartime France to provide humanitarian aid, only to find their own character and courage tested on the literal field of honor.
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
This mid-war periodical captures the raw intellectual pulse of the United States in 1864, blending urgent political advocacy with literary reflection during the nation’s greatest crisis.
The Game and the Candle
Eleanor M. (Eleanor Marie) Ingram
Two brothers face financial ruin, leading the elder to abandon his life of luxury for a dangerous, secret path in order to secure their future.
The Highflyers
Clarence Budington Kelland
A young man of reckless privilege finds his purpose when the looming shadow of the First World War forces him to trade his idle life for the defense of his country.
The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story
George Cary Eggleston
The onset of the American Civil War irrevocably alters the quiet, tradition-bound lives of two young Virginians, testing their loyalties, their budding romance, and their very notions of duty.
The Service
Henry David Thoreau
To live is to enlist in a perpetual campaign, where the only true battle is the one fought against the lethargy of the human soul. The spirit must become its own commander, turning every mundane moment into an act of heroic defiance.
The Shield of Silence
Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock
This novel explores the tension between inherited social expectations and the raw, individual impulse to "fly." It centers on two young women, Joan and Nancy, who navigate the complexities of identity, love, and the pressure to conform to traditional paths.
The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields
Sarah Bell Hackley
Amidst the grueling labor of the Kentucky tobacco fields, a simple romance navigates the interference of meddling neighbors, social rigidities, and the long shadows cast by the region’s volatile history.
Thrifty Stock, and Other Stories
Ben Ames Williams
A collection of stories that captures the rugged, often quiet intensity of early twentieth-century American life, revealing the hidden depths within ordinary people.
A Cumberland Vendetta
Fox, John, Jr.
A lingering, generational blood feud divides two families in the rugged Cumberland Mountains, forcing two young lovers to choose between their inherited hatred and a future together.
Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A sudden disappearance on a California ranch plunges a group of eastern visitors into a disorienting mystery, forcing them to confront the hidden, aging secrets of a sprawling adobe estate.
Calvary Alley
Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Growing up in the shadow of a city cathedral, a spirited girl struggles to rise above the poverty of her tenement home while protecting those she loves.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 5
Mark Twain
A world-traveler finds that while the map may change, the human comedy—and its capacity for both absurdity and tragedy—remains stubbornly the same.
Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer
Josephine Chase
A young woman’s wedding plans are halted by the sudden, mysterious disappearance of her fiancé, leading her friends on a desperate, suspenseful search through the wilderness.
Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School: The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls
Josephine Chase
Friendship, rivalry, and the anxieties of teenage social standing define the first year of high school for a group of spirited young women. This story captures the transition from childhood to adolescence through the lens of a turn-of-the-century school community.
Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman
Emma Speed Sampson
An resourceful young woman goes undercover as a maid to dismantle a villain's scheme and reunite two lost children with their long-lost parents.
Miss Billy
Marian Hurd McNeely
A young woman breathes new life into a dilapidated urban neighborhood, proving that small acts of kindness and community organization can transform even the bleakest street.
Sherwood Anderson
Eugene P. (Eugene Paul) Sheehy
This volume serves as a comprehensive, meticulously organized roadmap for anyone seeking to navigate the prolific and varied creative life of a seminal American storyteller. It is an essential guide to the primary and secondary literature surrounding a writer who fundamentally reshaped the American short story.
The Bad Man: A Novel
Porter Emerson Browne
A desperate struggle for survival unfolds on a remote Arizona ranch when an infamous bandit invades the home of a struggling American, forcing the inhabitants to confront their own weaknesses and desires under the shadow of a gun.
The Blood Red Dawn
Charles Caldwell Dobie
The quiet life of a young woman in San Francisco is abruptly shattered by a chance encounter, forcing her to confront the suffocating pretenses of her social class and the brutal realities of independence.
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Oscar Micheaux
HOOK Driven by a restless desire for independence, a young man leaves behind the stifling limitations of city life to claim his own future as a pioneer on the South Dakota prairie.
The Day of the Boomer Dukes
Frederik Pohl
HOOK A bored traveler from the distant future imports advanced weaponry into mid-century New York, inadvertently sparking a catastrophic conflict between street gangs and local law enforcement.
The Green Satin Gown
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
The life of a young person in the early twentieth century often hinged on simple choices, quiet burdens, and the sudden, often overwhelming, arrival of responsibility. These stories explore the quiet dignity found in small, everyday acts of endurance and kindness.
The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights: From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
On the isolated shores of Lake Michigan, a magnetic prophet builds a kingdom, only to watch it succumb to the fragile, human passions of his followers.
The Lay Anthony: A Romance
Joseph Hergesheimer
A young man’s fiercely protected innocence becomes a heavy, mysterious burden as he navigates a world of casual cynicism, eventually finding his only true anchor in a love that transcends the physical reach of his life.
The Little Colonel in Arizona
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
HOOK A resilient family navigates the loneliness of the Arizona desert, discovering that ambition and friendship are the true keys to transforming a wilderness into a home.
The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
The arrival of an unexpected suitor turns a quiet summer into a season of romantic tension and self-discovery for a young woman coming of age in the Kentucky countryside.
The Road Builders
Samuel Merwin
In the blistering heat of the untamed American West, a tenacious engineer battles both a lethal desert and a rival railroad tycoon to drive a line of steel toward the horizon.
The Story of a Country Town
E. W. (Edgar Watson) Howe
The relentless, suffocating gravity of a pioneer Kansas settlement shapes the lives of those trapped within its borders. Here, duty and austerity often prove more destructive than the harsh wilderness itself.