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American Literature — page 57
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 57 of 101.
The Lost Army
Thomas Wallace Knox
Two teenage boys from Iowa trade the quiet safety of their hometown shop for the smoke and uncertainty of the American Civil War, discovering that service often lies in the shadows rather than the front lines.
The man she hated
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
The heroine of this tale is a humble sewing machine operator who discovers that beauty and character are often dangerous commodities. Her life is a relentless pursuit of happiness against the backdrop of a changing New York.
Those Brewster Children
Florence Morse Kingsley
The domestic sphere is a battlefield of love and logic, where a mother’s gentle patience struggles against the rigid expectations of her peers and the unpredictable impulses of her three young children.
Diddie, Dumps & Tot
Louise Clarke Pyrnelle
HOOK Three young sisters grow up in the sheltered, insular world of a Southern plantation, where the stories and songs of the enslaved people surrounding them form the rhythm of their daily lives.
In Happy Valley
Fox, John, Jr.
The rugged, isolated mountains of Kentucky serve as the stage for this collection of tales, where ancient codes of honor, sudden violence, and the transformative power of modern influence collide in a quiet valley. These stories capture a world poised on the precipice of change, painting a vivid portrait of a…
Luck and Pluck
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A resilient orphan fights to reclaim his rightful inheritance from a scheming stepmother and her spoiled son. Through grit and integrity, he navigates a journey from dispossession to triumph.
"Short Sixes": Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns
H. C. (Henry Cuyler) Bunner
These tales illuminate the quiet, often absurd complexities of American life, offering a witty lens through which to view human vanity, social aspiration, and the persistent endurance of the heart.
Streets of Night
John Dos Passos
A haunting portrait of youth stifled by the rigid expectations of early 20th-century Boston, this narrative traces the desperate search for meaning among a circle of sensitive, alienated friends. It is a work of restless atmosphere and deep, melancholy insight.
The Hills of Desire
Richard Aumerle Maher
The story follows a young woman’s desperate quest for autonomy and her complex, unorthodox marriage during the tumultuous years of the First World War. It is a portrait of two people building a private sanctuary against a world that demands their conformity.
The lion's share
Octave Thanet
The arrival of a young man’s sudden disappearance in the shadow of a high-stakes financial war creates a tangle of suspicion that only a seasoned soldier can unravel. Amidst the rising tensions of a changing country, a quiet mystery unfolds in the grand houses of San Francisco just as the earth begins to tremble.
The Stingy Receiver
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
A wealthy, invalid recluse attempts to orchestrate the lives of those around her, only to discover that the most precious human connections cannot be purchased or commanded.
The Trufflers: A Story
Samuel Merwin
The search for authentic meaning often leads to the most unexpected corners of one's own character. In a world of artistic posturing, the most vital truths are frequently found by those who stop looking for them.
Bad Hugh
Mary Jane Holmes
A deeply moral, nineteenth-century domestic drama, this story traces the long-suffering path of a misunderstood man and a gentle woman, bound together by the trials of a divided nation and the harsh judgments of their social circle.
Mamba's daughters
DuBose Heyward
Mamba, an indomitable woman of the Charleston waterfront, orchestrates a decades-long struggle to elevate her daughter and granddaughter above the constraints of their station. It is a story of fierce maternal ambition and the heavy costs of social ascent.
My Chinese Marriage
Mae M. Franking
A young American student’s cross-cultural marriage survives intense familial opposition and geographic upheaval, only to face a final, tragic test of endurance. This memoir captures a rare, intimate perspective on the intersection of Eastern tradition and Western modernity in the early twentieth century.
Nobody's Child
Elizabeth Dejeans
A young woman caught between two warring social strata finds her quiet life shattered by the arrival of a dangerous outsider and the dark, hereditary secrets of a prominent local family.
Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870
Various
This periodical captures the manic, biting, and irreverent spirit of late 19th-century American satire, offering a vivid time capsule of the post-Civil War era’s political and social anxieties.
Robert Hardy's Seven Days: A Dream and Its Consequences
Charles M. Sheldon
A prosperous man receives a dire premonition that he has only one week left to live, transforming his final seven days into a desperate, grace-filled race to reconcile his broken life and mend his neglectful past.
Rookie rhymes, by the men of the 1st and 2nd provisional training regiments, Plattsburg, New York
Plattsburgh Barracks (N.Y.)
A collection of earnest, spirited verse from the 1917 Plattsburg training camp, these poems capture the humor and apprehension of young men preparing to ship out for the First World War.
The climbers
Clyde Fitch
A portrait of social ambition and moral decay in turn-of-the-century New York, this drama explores the wreckage left behind when a man trades his integrity for a seat at the city’s most exclusive tables.
The Marne: A Tale of the War
Edith Wharton
A young American boy, haunted by the German invasion of France, abandons his role as a passive observer to find his own place in the cataclysm of the Great War.
Val Sinestra
Martha Morton
This portrait of New York’s upper crust traces the hidden, often agonizing, intersections of two families bound by long-buried secrets. It is a dense, atmospheric study of repression, faith, and the crushing weight of ancestral identity.
Yankee Girls in Zulu Land
Louise Vescelius Sheldon
HOOK A nineteenth-century travelogue of endurance and curiosity, this narrative follows two American women as they traverse the harsh, diamond-rich interior of South Africa in search of health and adventure.
A Daughter of the Land
Gene Stratton-Porter
HOOK A young woman battles a patriarchal farming family to claim her independence and land, choosing her own path through labor, teaching, and the fierce pursuit of self-sufficiency.
A Romance in Transit
Francis Lynde
The "Flying Kestrel" speeds across the American West, carrying a passenger agent and a railroad president’s daughter toward a collision of social standing and romantic intent. This is a story of iron rails and iron wills, where the rigid hierarchy of class meets the fluid possibilities of a journey.
Baseball Joe on the School Nine
Lester Chadwick
Targeting an energetic, dedicated, yet grounded tone, here is a complete guide to Lester Chadwick's classic sports tale based directly on the provided text. A young pitcher at a strict prep school faces down snobbish upperclassmen, classroom discipline, and framed accusations while fighting for his rightful place…
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2. No. 13, October, 1920: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
A lively artifact of post-World War I American pop culture, this monthly digest balances rowdy military humor with razor-sharp period satire.
Esther
Henry Adams
The bustling, social world of 1880s New York serves as the backdrop for a quiet, intense collision between modern skepticism and traditional faith. Caught in the orbit of an earnest young clergyman and a brilliant artist, a young woman searches for a path that honors her own integrity.
Her Letter, His Answer & Her Last Letter
Bret Harte
A young woman and a gold miner navigate the distance between high society and the rugged frontier, testing whether their shared history can survive the complications of sudden wealth and long-standing pride.
Laughing Last
Jane Abbott
Fifteen-year-old Sidney Romley wants her fair turn at independence, but a summer on Cape Cod brings her far more than she bargained for, including old shipwrecks, local eccentricities, and real danger on the water.
Mildred's Inheritance
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A young girl’s desperate quest for independence leads to ruinous results, proving that self-will often carries a heavy, unexpected price.
Miss Ludington's Sister
Edward Bellamy
HOOK A lonely, aging woman finds new purpose when a young man convinces her that her lost youth can be summoned back. This haunting tale explores the boundaries between memory, identity, and the desperate hunger for a second chance.
Mrs. Cliff's Yacht
Frank R. Stockton
A wealthy widow discovers that sudden, absolute independence is far more complicated and perilous than a life of modest means. She unexpectedly finds herself navigating the high seas to rescue friends from pirates and peril.
Nobody's Rose
Adele E. Thompson
She runs through the night with a bundle of memories, traded from one harsh world to a softer one, only to discover that her true home is something she must claim for herself.
On Being Negro in America
J. Saunders (Jay Saunders) Redding
Living as a Black person in America means enduring a constant, exhausting double-consciousness where every private action and public movement is shaped by the unyielding weight of caste and prejudice.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 94, August, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This issue of a venerable literary magazine captures the fractured spirit of 1865, weaving together the tranquil observations of nature with the visceral, lingering grief of a nation finally emerging from civil war.
The bride's fate: The sequel to "The changed brides"
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
Left behind in America while her highborn husband pursues his inheritance in London, a devoted young mother guards her child and waits for a reconciliation that only heartbreak and scandal can delay.
The Cream of the Jest: A comedy of evasions
James Branch Cabell
A middle-aged novelist escapes his dull existence by traveling through historic eras via a broken metal disc, only to discover that the magic he seeks was quietly beside him all along.
The house with the silver door
Eva March Tappan
In the dark or deep in the forest, kindness and plain courage always light the path home.
The Key to Yesterday
Charles Neville Buck
A celebrated artist, haunted by a forgotten past and a hidden identity, must traverse a dangerous international web to reclaim the woman he loves and the memory of who he truly is.
The story of Don Miff
Virginius Dabney
Across the fractured landscape of nineteenth-century Virginia, a eccentric narrator weaves a rambling chronicle of music, aristocratic domesticity, and the catastrophic rupture of the Civil War.
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X)
Unknown
These pages capture the idiosyncratic spirit of a bygone era, weaving together the absurd, the sentimental, and the vernacular voices that once defined the American literary landscape.
An Accidental Honeymoon
Edward Barron
Summer on the Eastern Shore brings together a stranded New York writer and a spirited young woman hiding in plain sight.
Cities in the air
Edmond Hamilton
When colossal, anti-gravity metropolises take to the skies, global diplomacy gives way to total aerial devastation across the heavens.
Little Nobody
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A stolen bride, a shadowy prison, and a legacy of lies clash when a young woman escapes the South only to face heartbreak in the North.
Maid Sally
Harriet A. (Harriet Anna) Cheever
A poor, neglected girl hiding in a garden hedge hears a young gentleman reading stories, and that single spark kindles a lifelong determination to educate herself, claim her true heritage, and stand as his equal.
Minerva's Manoeuvres: The Cheerful Facts of a "Return to Nature"
Charles Battell Loomis
A city couple’s attempt at country living hinges entirely on keeping their terrified, city-loving cook from fleeing back to New York.
Strange stories of the Civil War
John Habberton
A collection of eyewitness accounts reveals the human intensity of the American Civil War through the direct observations of those who lived it.