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American Literature — page 59
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 59 of 101.
The Chinese Kitten
Edna A. Brown
A quiet, golden portrait of New England childhood that captures the extraordinary weight of small everyday choices.
The Empty Sack
Basil King
A quiet, compassionate study of what happens when financial pressure tests the limits of human integrity and family devotion.
The Experiences of a Bandmaster
John Philip Sousa
Behind the stately façade of American high culture lies a vibrant, unpredictable world where a bandmaster must navigate temperamental locomotives, sudden Blackouts, and vanishing musicians with equal poise.
The Morning Glory Club
George A. (George Alexander) Kyle
A small New England village turns into a battleground of manners, gossip, and local pride when a group of women decide to organize a club of their own.
The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American Jew
Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf) Gabriel
Courage replaces conformity as a young American Jew navigates prejudice, loss, and the slow discovery of his own heritage across seven pivotal years of education.
Up Terrapin River
Opie Percival Read
The steep, timbered hollows and fertile river bottoms of northern Arkansas frame a world where deep human loyalties, untamed country, and the struggle for self-improvement intersect in the years following the Civil War.
A. D. 2000
Alvarado M. (Alvarado Mortimer) Fuller
A man awakens from a century-long slumber to find a transformed America, where advanced technology and a universal language have ushered in a new era of global stability and scientific wonder.
Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin
Ralph Chaplin
Inside a steel-bound cell, an imprisoned union agitator transforms his confinement into a defiant, lyrical testimony, measuring the vast cost of economic resistance against the unquenchable human drive for total liberation.
Baseball Joe in the World Series
Lester Chadwick
A celebrated pitcher for the New York Giants must overcome a series of dangerous kidnappings orchestrated by a bitter rival to secure his team’s victory in the World Series.
Justice in the By-Ways, a Tale of Life
F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Beneath a polished facade of polite society lies a network of hypocrisy, where systemic cruelty and institutional decay bind the vulnerable to the whims of the powerful.
Tar and feathers
Victor Rubin
Tar and Feathers is a 1924 social-problem novel that examines the intersection of post-WWI disillusionment and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. Through the eyes of a returning soldier, it explores how racial and religious prejudice manifests in a society struggling to reconcile its democratic…
The Angel of the Gila: A Tale of Arizona
Cora Marsland
A dedicated teacher arrives in an Arizona mining camp, where her compassion and moral influence transform the lives of rough-hewn settlers and a young Indian boy.
The Little Colonel's Holidays
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
The Little Colonel’s holidays are a series of sun-drenched, sentimental adventures in a Kentucky valley where the values of home, heritage, and kindness define the rhythm of every passing season.
The Song of Hugh Glass
John G. Neihardt
The American West is not a wilderness to be conquered, but a crucible for the human spirit, where survival is merely the beginning of an arduous journey toward reconciliation. This epic narrative captures the raw, unforgiving majesty of a landscape that demands everything from those who dare to traverse it.
The Third Degree: A Narrative of Metropolitan Life
Charles Klein
Howard Jeffries, a man adrift in the relentless machinery of the city, finds himself ensnared in a lethal web of past indiscretions and brutal police interrogation. Forced into a confession for a murder he did not commit, he faces the ultimate test of survival in an unforgiving metropolitan underworld.
A Struggle for a Fortune
Harry Castlemon
A resourceful boy struggles to protect an old man’s legacy from his greedy, abusive guardians in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
Angelica
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
HOOK A young woman navigates the crushing poverty of New York to chase a dream of refinement, only to find that the social ladder she climbs is built on the ruins of her own integrity.
Bart Stirling's Road to Success
Allen Chapman
Bart Stirling, a diligent young man, must step into his injured father’s shoes to navigate the cutthroat world of the railroad express business, where loyalty and quick wits are the only currency that matters.
Flaming Youth
Samuel Hopkins Adams
This portrait of a restless, affluent family captures the friction between generational expectations and the fast-living, boundary-testing impulses of the early 1920s. It is a candid, clinical, and often biting examination of a social class that possesses everything except a clear sense of purpose.
Meg of Mystery Mountain
Grace May North
HOOK A spoiled young woman finds her humanity in the rugged silence of the Rocky Mountains, where long-lost family secrets and hard-won friendships await in the shadows of a defunct gold mine.
Peggy Raymond's Way
Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
This story follows four inseparable young women as they navigate the transition from school life to adulthood, balancing the demands of romance, social etiquette, and their own emerging identities.
Rainbow Hill
Josephine Lawrence
The Willis sisters discover that the true treasure of a summer in the country is not found in golden pots, but in the quiet, transformative power of kindness.
The Actress' Daughter: A Novel
May Agnes Fleming
The stormy, untamed child of a fading actress finds her life irrevocably entwined with the fortunes of a proud, aristocratic family, setting the stage for a long, arduous journey toward maturity and grace.
The Boss of the Lazy Y
Charles Alden Seltzer
A man returns home to a broken legacy, only to find his path toward redemption guarded by a woman who refuses to let him succumb to his own destructive nature.
The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross
Gertrude W. Morrison
A jewelry store ledger, a mysterious hit-and-run, and a school play collide to drive a spirited group of students toward a noble goal.
The Making of an American
Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis
A Danish immigrant navigates the harsh realities of late 19th-century New York to become a crusading journalist, eventually finding his true identity through a lifetime of public service and a steadfast devotion to his adopted country.
The Melting of Molly
Maria Thompson Daviess
A young widow decides to shed her mourning—and her excess weight—to reclaim her life. In doing so, she finds herself caught in a whirlwind of romantic dilemmas and the watchful, judgmental eyes of her small Southern town.
The Ranch Girls and Their Heart's Desire
Margaret Vandercook
The courage of a woman seeking her own path, whether in the rugged expanse of the American West or the turbulent arena of politics, defines this spirited tale of growth and loyalty.
The Seer of Slabsides
Dallas Lore Sharp
This biographical study offers an intimate, reflective portrait of the renowned American naturalist John Burroughs. Written by his peer and friend, it captures the essence of a man who found profound philosophical meaning in the simple, observable rhythms of the natural world.
Traits of American Humour, Vol. 3 of 3
Unknown
This collection gathers the boisterous, colloquial, and often absurd voices of the American frontier, preserving a vital, unvarnished record of mid-19th-century regional wit. It captures the spirit of a sprawling, diverse nation through the tall tales, local dialects, and rough-hewn characters that defined the era.
What Is Your Culture to Me?
Charles Dudley Warner
The world does not owe the scholar a living, nor does it necessarily care for the wisdom packed into a graduate’s "neat little parcels." True culture must prove its worth by stepping out of the library and into the lives of the people.
Bypaths in Dixie: Folk Tales of the South
Sarah Johnson Cocke
This collection of folk tales preserves a vanishing world of Southern oral tradition, centered on the gentle, authoritative voice of a black nurse sharing stories with the children in her care. It is a portrait of a specific time and place, captured through the imaginative lens of a storyteller who sees the natural…
Cora and The Doctor
Madeline Leslie
The domestic life of a physician in 1830s Massachusetts serves as the backdrop for this intimate journal of faith, duty, and the quiet struggles of a growing household. It explores the sanctity of marriage and the heavy burdens of moral responsibility in a changing society.
Eben Holden's Last Day A-Fishing
Irving Bacheller
The golden light of a summer afternoon in the New York hills reveals the quiet, profound end of a long life lived in harmony with nature and simple faith.
His Little World: The Story of Hunch Badeau
Samuel Merwin
A rugged ship captain navigates the turbulent waters of the Great Lakes while struggling to reconcile his deep, unspoken devotion to a married woman with the harsh realities of his shifting life.
Mary Wollaston
Henry Kitchell Webster
The quiet struggles of an unconventional woman and a struggling musician collide within a high-society Chicago family, revealing the fragile, often invisible, barriers between duty and desire.
The Escape
William Wells Brown
The pursuit of liberty transforms an intimate, domestic struggle into a desperate race toward the Canadian border. Through a series of harrowing confrontations, those bound by iron and law gamble everything to reach a place where they are finally recognized as human.
The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel
David Graham Phillips
A whirlwind of political ambition and social collision, this story traces the turbulent courtship and marriage of a man who possesses raw, unstoppable power and a woman who prides herself on her refined, impenetrable poise.
The first American King
George Gordon Hastings
The American experiment dissolves into a gilded autocracy, leaving two men to awaken in a future where their lost Republic has been traded for the crushing weight of imperial chains.
The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
This chronicle of a grand excursion captures the collision between romanticized expectations of the Old World and the gritty, often absurd reality of nineteenth-century travel. It offers a skeptical, irreverent, and deeply human look at the cradle of Western civilization.
The man with the hoe, and other poems
Edwin Markham
This collection of verse acts as a bridge between Victorian lyrical tradition and the awakening of American social conscience, framing the struggle of the laboring class as a fundamental spiritual crisis.
The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
This collection gathers the rhythmic, witty, and deeply contemplative verses of a quintessential nineteenth-century man of letters. It serves as a bridge between the structured formality of the era and the inquisitive, skeptical spirit of a modern mind.
The Red Cross Girls with Pershing to Victory
Margaret Vandercook
This chronicle follows a group of young American Red Cross nurses as they transition from the battlefields of France to the occupied territory of Germany, navigating the complex emotional aftermath of the Great War. It is a story of service, burgeoning independence, and the quiet, personal recalibrations required…
The Squirrel Inn
Frank R. Stockton
A peaceful summer retreat becomes a stage for shifting social allegiances, where scholarly eccentricities and whispered reputations collide with the arrival of a mysterious, high-born nursemaid.
Brenda's Ward: A Sequel to 'Amy in Acadia'
Helen Leah Reed
The charm of early twentieth-century adolescence pulses through these pages, capturing a world of debutante teas, academic ambitions, and the quiet, enduring loyalties of young women navigating the social expectations of their time.
Frank Merriwell's Return to Yale
Burt L. Standish
An iconic American hero returns to his campus to navigate the intense social and physical rivalries of undergraduate life, where integrity is constantly tested by secret societies, athletic challenges, and personal vendettas.
Lincoln Day Entertainments: Recitations, Plays, Dialogues, Drills, Tableaux, Pantomimes, Quotations, Songs, Tributes, Stories, Facts
Unknown
HOOK This collection gathers the songs, plays, and tributes designed to honor a president, capturing the reverence and national grief that defined the American memory of Abraham Lincoln in the early twentieth century.
Southern Hearts
Florence Hull Winterburn
These stories explore the quiet, internal landscapes of women navigating the social expectations and domestic tensions of the turn-of-the-century American South.