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American Literature — page 58
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 58 of 101.
Sybil Chase
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A ruthless woman manipulates her way back into high society, hiding a past tied to an outlaw husband in the wilds of California to secure the wealthy man she truly desires.
Taboo: A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius Nicanor, with
James Branch Cabell
A writer facing sudden censorship turns his legal troubles into an intricate, thinly disguised allegory about a society where mentioning food is illegal.
The Barton Experiment
John Habberton
To change a town, moral speeches matter far less than opening wallets, creating jobs, and doing the messy, daily work of human companionship.
The Bellamy trial
Frances Noyes Hart
A small-town courtroom turns into an arena of public voyeurism as two respectable lovers stand trial for a brutal midnight murder on a Long Island estate.
The Fascinating Stranger, and Other Stories
Booth Tarkington
Transient encounters and minor social indignities echo across mid-century America, where youth and vanity routinely collide.
The Rising Tide
Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
A headstrong young woman’s fierce fight for personal independence crashes into the quiet routines, rigid expectations, and unspoken heartbreaks of her traditional family.
The Secret Play
Ralph Henry Barbour
A sidelined teenager with a sharp mind and a quiet will takes the reins of his high school football team, transforming a disorganized squad through intellect, strategy, and sheer tactical patience.
The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys
Gulielma Zollinger
Determined to keep her family together after her husband's death, an impoverished Irish widow guides her seven sons through the trials of hard work and self-reliance in a small Midwestern town.
To the Highest Bidder
Florence Morse Kingsley
Desperate to clear her late father’s debts and keep her family farm, a proud young woman puts herself up at public auction, only to find the man who buys her contract wants far more than her labor.
April twilights, and other poems
Willa Cather
Longing and memory pulse through these verses, where classical ruins, urban backstreets, and open western plains all mirror the quiet ache of human passage.
Autumnal leaves: tales and sketches in prose and rhyme
Lydia Maria Child
Tender green shoots push through prairie soil, while human hearts struggle against social constraints, cruelty, and the quiet weight of memory.
Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories
Joel Chandler Harris
A set of regional sketches reveals the Reconstruction South through its quiet acts of loyalty, deep personal rivalries, and tragic misunderstandings.
Baseball Joe, Captain of the Team
Lester Chadwick
A veteran star pitcher faces fielding slumps, locker-room sabotage, and personal anxieties while attempting to lead the New York Giants to a National League pennant.
Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath
Elsie Singmaster
War arrives not as a distant political abstraction, but as a sudden, physical shock that tears through kitchens, shatters quiet pastures, and echoes down through half a century of human memory.
Ole Mammy's Torment
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A bright, energetic boy tests his grandmother's patience, until a dying mentor's quiet example gives his boundless spirit a lasting, noble purpose.
On With Torchy
Sewell Ford
A witty office boy navigates love, work, and mischief in early 20th-century New York.
Raw Material
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
A raw, unfiltered view of human existence reveals how ordinary lives hold the ultimate stuff of art.
Self-Denial
American Sunday-School Union
A group of schoolgirls form a society to save money for missionary work, learning self-denial and compassion.
The Girl Next Door
Augusta Huiell Seaman
A shadowed window across a city garden, a secretive girl forced to run errands alone, and two locked silver bracelets: a quiet New York street yields a haunting mystery.
The Way Out
Emerson Hough
A man born into poverty and violence discovers a higher calling, only to find that escaping his past requires confronting the deep-seated sins of his mountain home and his own soul.
Trench Ballads, and Other Verses
Erwin Clarkson Garrett
In the mud and mist of the Western Front, an American infantryman records the visceral reality of the trenches with unvarnished candor, simple rhyme, and unflinching detail.
Two Weeks in August
Frank M. Robinson
When a weary desk jockey invents a fictional vacation to Mars to outsmart his insufferable coworker, his harmless lie turns into a jaw-dropping reality.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 9
Mark Twain
A 19th-century American time-traveler pits his modern technological genius against the medieval order, culminating in an apocalyptic clash with the Arthurian world.
A Little Maid of Province Town
Alice Turner Curtis
A lonely orphan on the windswept sands of Cape Cod finds a home, faces down local bullies, and accidentally carries a crucial secret for the American Revolution.
A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A group of teenagers and their guardians leave city life behind to set up a summer camp in a Southern California canyon, turning a simple vacation into an unforgettable rite of passage.
Call Him Nemesis
Donald E. Westlake
A ten-year-old boy discovers he can alter the temperature of distant objects with his mind, adopting the secret persona of a comic-book hero to fight local crime.
Dixie Hart
Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben
Bound by an ill-fated marriage and mountain poverty, a resilient woman and her noble neighbor navigate secret devotions, ruthless schemes, and a sudden resurrection.
"I Conquered"
Harold Titus
When a ruined New York playboy flees to the Colorado high country to break a desperate drinking habit, he finds an unlikely soulmate in a wild black stallion who refuses to be mastered by any other hand.
Icebound: A Play
Owen Davis
A proud New England family gathers to divide an inheritance, only to find the dead matrix of their history passed over for an outsider.
Nick Carter Stories No. 124, January 23, 1915: The girl kidnaper
Nicholas (House name) Carter
When high-society hotel guests vanish behind locked doors without a trace, famed detective Nick Carter steps in to untangle a scheme involving knock-out gas, secret aliases, and a daring offshore rescue.
Santa Fé's Partner: Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town
Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier
A sharp-witted gambler and his equally resourceful female companion turn a lawless New Mexican railhead into their personal theater of staged hoaxes and tall tales.
The Adventures of Paddy Beaver
Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess
Paddy the Beaver works untiringly deep in the forest, felling trees to construct a sanctuary where he can survive the coming winter.
The City of Masks
George Barr McCutcheon
A disguised British aristocrat works as a chauffeur in New York City, shielding his identity while falling for a high-spirited governess who harbors her own secrets.
The mother's recompense
Edith Wharton
A woman’s past return to destroy her second chance at motherhood when her former lover woos her grown daughter.
The Young Book Agent
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A sudden financial crisis forces a schoolboy to hit the road as a subscription book salesman, turning a family disaster into an education in self-reliance, honesty, and quick-witted survival.
Without a Home
Edward Payson Roe
A devoted daughter shields her family from urban poverty while struggling to save her father from the silent ruin of morphine addiction in Gilded Age New York.
A First Family of Tasajara
Bret Harte
A wet night in a flooded California settlement sets off a chain of quiet betrayals, unearned wealth, and sudden gentility.
Bart Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio
A. G. (Albert Gallatin) Riddle
When a flood destroys the bridge over an Ohio river, a stranded young traveler must choose between giving up or forging a way across his own unsettled future.
First harvests
Frederic Jesup Stimson
A biting portrait of Gilded Age ambition, this novel follows the intersection of high-society climbers, cynical financiers, and the disillusioned souls who drift in their wake. It is a sharp, atmospheric examination of a society discarding its old moral foundations for the cold, glittering allure of wealth.
Grace Harlowe's Problem
Josephine Chase
When a high-minded young woman puts her duty to others above her own happiness, she risks losing the very life she was trying to protect.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Bret Harte
Bret Harte
The life of the California frontier is captured here through the eyes of a master storyteller who saw both the grit of the mining camp and the fading elegance of the Spanish missions. This collection serves as a comprehensive gateway to an expansive body of work that defined the Western literary imagination.
Life on the Mississippi, Part 6
Mark Twain
A vast, mud-stained river sweeps through a changing South, carrying memory, tragedy, and the quiet joke of a altered world.
Mary Louise at Dorfield
Emma Speed Sampson
Postwar quiet comes slowly to a small town where ambitious young women, a clever girl detective, and a pair of charming swindlers collide over stolen goods and wedding plans.
Miss Lochinvar: A Story for Girls
Marion Ames Taggart
An unpretentious girl from a small Kansas town brings warmth, practical sense, and steady affection into her wealthy, distant relatives' cluttered New York home.
Nick Carter Stories No. 160, October 2, 1915: The Yellow Label
Nicholas (House name) Carter
A slick High Society crime scheme collides with a crusader's camera war, revealing the rot hidden behind Gotham's high walls and small-town prestige.
Quicksilver Sue
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A passionate girl’s imagination outpaces her common sense when a stylish newcomer turns a sleepy town upside down.
Rose MacLeod
Alice Brown
Bound by New England tradition and shaken by incoming radical ideas, a quietly passionate community grapples with duty, truth, and the deceptive allure of grand romantic visions.
The Abandoned Farmer
Sydney Herman Preston
City life can break a young family's spirit, but moving to the country to save a child's health turns out to be a hilarious exercise in trial, error, and financial improvisation.