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American Literature — page 55
3,593 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 55 of 75.
The Twenty-Fourth of June: Midsummer's Day
Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond
A wealthy young man finds a new purpose after stumbling into a traditional family home, where he sheds his aimless habits to win the heart of a spirited teacher.
With the Procession
Henry Blake Fuller
The old guard of Chicago finds itself adrift as the city’s rapid expansion demands a new, more aggressive way of life. This portrait of a family caught between tradition and modernization captures the inevitable decline of an era.
A Young Girl's Wooing
Edward Payson Roe
A transformation of body and spirit drives this journey toward clarity, where one woman’s quiet resolve recalibrates the lives of those caught in the turbulent tides of Wall Street and the shifting social currents of the late nineteenth century.
Affinities, and Other Stories
Mary Roberts Rinehart
A weary wife stages a fake affair, a socialite tries to escape her own engagement, and a group of British activists kidnap the Prime Minister in this sparkling collection of comic misadventures.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 31, March, 1922: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
A vibrant time capsule of 1920s American pop culture, this monthly digest captures the irrepressible energy, irreverent humor, and brassy charm of Prohibition-era entertainment.
Cupid's Middleman
Edward B. (Edward Burcham) Lent
A bungling amateur matchmaker finds his own life and his friend's romance nearly destroyed when his overblown love letters fall into the wrong hands.
Dangerous Ground
Lawrence L. Lynch
A high-stakes game of shadows and secrets unfolds as two rival detectives race to uncover the truth behind a mysterious woman, a missing child, and a decades-old crime.
Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession: A Novel
Benjamin Wood
The shadows of the American Civil War fall heavy upon personal loyalties in this tale of fractured kinship and ideological strife. It captures the desperate struggle to maintain love and individual conscience when a nation descends into violent, brother-against-brother conflict.
From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee
Edward Simmons
A New England painter looks back on a life spent chasing color, from childhood among Concord’s sages to the studios of Paris and the boomtown energy of Gilded Age America.
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 Glory of the Conquered: The Story of a Great Love
Susan Glaspell
When a brilliant scientist loses his sight and his career, his artist wife attempts to defy fate by mastering his laboratory work. It is a story of how love survives the ultimate collapse of human potential.
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 success machine
Henry Slesar
The corporate ladder is a treacherous climb, but what happens when the boss is a machine that refuses to suffer fools or favorites? Here is a cautionary tale about efficiency at the cost of humanity.
The Triflers
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Two aimless, wealthy socialites enter a marriage of convenience to preserve their freedom, only to discover that their shared charade has become an inescapable and life-altering reality.
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.
The Valley of Content
Blanche Upright
A modest bungalow in an California town gives way to New York society, exposing how wealth can fracture a family before hard-earned humility leads them back to what truly matters.
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.
Poets of the South: A Series of Biographical and Critical Studies with Typical Poems, Annotated
F. V. N. (Franklin Verzelius Newton) Painter
A nineteenth-century regional literature seeks its rightful place in the national memory through biographical sketches, critical commentary, and selected verse.
Slow and Sure: The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A disciplined street vendor and a hardened street waif navigate the moral traps of Gilded Age New York, proving that steady integrity cuts a truer path than quick crime.
Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A quiet winter storm transforms a small New England town, calling forth deep reflections on human mortality, artistic creation, and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.
The Argonauts of North Liberty
Bret Harte
A chilly Connecticut parish hides a secret romance, propelling two men and a cold, pious woman into the turbulent chaos of Gold Rush California.
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 Golden Judge
Nathaniel Gordon
A flippant suggestion made during a sweltering UN armistice meeting unexpected transforms global diplomacy by proving that nations respect the outcome of a fair bet far more than formal treaties.
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.