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American Literature — page 65
3,373 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 65 of 71.

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.

Quite So
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A quiet schoolmaster from Maine, burdened by a broken heart, finds an unlikely home among soldiers in the American Civil War. His mysterious, stoic presence masks a deep, self-sacrificing devotion that ultimately defines his end.

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 Choice: 1916
Edith Wharton
A stifling summer night becomes a stage for hidden desperation, where the suffocating weight of a loveless marriage leads to a moment of irrevocable, dark decision.

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 Hermit Of ——— Street: 1898
Anna Katharine Green
This mystery of 1898 captures the unsettling intersection of domestic comfort and hidden, high-stakes malice. Through the eyes of an ingenue, a dark secret is slowly unspooled, revealing how a young woman’s romantic fascination with a brooding, mysterious neighbor leads her into a trap of her own making.

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 Husbands of Edith
George Barr McCutcheon
The quiet charm of a European holiday takes an unexpected turn when a man agrees to pose as his best friend, only to find himself entangled in a web of impersonation and romance.

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.

In and Out
Edgar Franklin
A eccentric bachelor tries to force an opportunity onto a street youth, only to find himself trapped in a farce of secret identities, missing heirs, and wild accusations.

Indian Legends and Other Poems
Mary Gardiner Horsford
Tragic legends of loss and longing meet domestic quietude in a mid-nineteenth-century volume where mortal lives dissolve quickly into memory, spirit, and star.

Last Days in a Dutch Hotel (from Literature and Life)
William Dean Howells
A chilly September wind blows across the North Sea as an American traveler lingers through the dying days of the tourist season at a grand resort in Scheveningen.

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.

Mr. Achilles
Jennette Lee
A little girl in a bustling American city forms an unlikely bond with a humble Greek fruit-seller, setting off a quiet revolution of empathy that ultimately rescues her from danger.

Roughing It, Part 2
Mark Twain
A sweeping overland journey transforms from a romantic adventure into a dusty test of endurance across the rugged American West.

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.

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 Flower of the Chapdelaines
George Washington Cable
A sudden, captivating glimpse of a refined young Creole woman in the historic streets of New Orleans sparks a young lawyer's devotion and draws him into a world of vibrant memory, community, and romance.

The Plague
Teddy Keller
A sudden, invisible illness incapacitates the country, leaving a forgotten military office to trace a mystery that evades every standard epidemiological rule.

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.

Trial and Triumph
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
A fiery, orphaned Black girl grows into a determined young woman, fighting racial prejudice and personal heartbreak to build a life of principle, intellect, and moral purpose.

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.

Ormond
Charles Brockden Brown
An orphaned woman faces ruin, pestilence, and a seductive nihilist who believes his superior intellect exempts him from human morality.