Free summaries
American Literature — page 70
3,373 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 70 of 71.
The Little Gray Lady: 1909
Francis Hopkinson Smith
The Little Gray Lady is a delicate, atmospheric study of a woman who has spent twenty years mourning a lost love, only to find the past unexpectedly brought to life by the village youth. It is a quiet, sentimental exploration of memory and the redemptive power of a truth spoken in time.
The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories
Charles Egbert Craddock
A haunting, atmospheric portrait of life in the Cumberland Mountains, these tales capture the intersection of jagged landscapes and the complex, often isolated hearts of those who dwell among them.
The Nine-Tenths
James Oppenheim
A wealthy printer’s life is shattered by a catastrophic factory fire, leading him to abandon his business to fight for the rights of the city’s most vulnerable laborers. This is a story of personal transformation and the high cost of social justice.
The Poisoned Pen
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A scientific investigator navigates the grit of early twentieth-century New York, using cutting-edge chemistry and emerging technology to solve mysteries that baffle the police.
Wanted—A Match Maker
Paul Leicester Ford
This gentle, turn-of-the-century tale explores how a chance accident can bridge the immense social chasm between a wealthy young woman and a struggling hospital physician. It is a story of quiet transformation, where class barriers dissolve through the shared care of an injured newsboy.
When I was your age
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A warm, candid memoir of a vibrant 19th-century childhood, this collection of recollections offers an intimate window into a household defined by intellect, public service, and boundless imagination. It serves as a gentle bridge between the past and the present, capturing the universal spirit of growing up.
A Drift from Redwood Camp
Bret Harte
A cowardly California outcast drifts downstream on a log into an Indian village, where he is mistaken for a prophesied ruler.
Amos Kilbright
Frank R. Stockton
A man long since drowned at sea is accidentally materialized by spiritualists and must navigate Victorian social norms, employment, and love while dodging a German scientist intent on dematerializing him.
Discovery at Aspen
Sophie (Sophie Z. Liebowitz) Ruskay
A teenage girl spends a pivotal summer surrounded by music, ghost towns, and newfound independence in the Colorado Rockies.
Rippling Rhymes
Walt Mason
A jaunty, quick-witted look at small-town American life, where everyday frustrations and comic hypocrisies are captured in clever prose disguise.
"Some Say"
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A gossip-plagued minister, a quiet deaf woman, and a steadfast neighbor navigating grief each discover how small-town scrutiny shapes their domestic fates.
The Abandoned Room
Wadsworth Camp
The mystery of a death in a locked room draws the living into a web of suspicion, forcing them to confront the chilling possibility that some secrets cannot stay buried.
The Bee's Bayonet (a Little Honey and a Little Sting): Camouflage in Word Painting
Edwin Alfred Watrous
An earnest, eccentric artifact of First World War home-front fervor, this 1918 collection mixes fierce anti-German patriotism with light verse, domestic sketches, and biblical parodies.
The Cavaliers of Virginia, vol. 2 of 2
William Alexander Caruthers
The clash between colonial liberty and royal authority explodes across seventeenth-century Virginia, where a young leader must choose between his heart's devotion and his country's freedom.
The Girl From His Town
Marie Van Vorst
A young American heir with millions to spend crosses the Atlantic only to discover that the purest thing money can buy is a quiet life back home with the girl who knew him before he was rich.
The ways of the hour
James Fenimore Cooper
A small-town murder trial exposes a judicial system compromised by public hysteria, greedy lawyers, and a defendant whose calm perfection masks a unsettling truth.
Andy at Yale
Roy Eliot Stokes
Two small-town athletic heroes head to New Haven, where missing money, campus feuds, and a framed farmhand test their loyalty to their school and each other.
Ann Arbor Tales
Karl Edwin Harriman
Small-town Midwestern university life reveals its quiet heart: a place of sharp academic rivalries, fleeting romantic devotions, and the unsettling realization of what higher education costs the human soul.
Christmas Carols and Midsummer Songs
Various
This classic collection captures the changing seasons through children’s eyes, pairing the magic of winter holidays with the warm freedom of summer days.
Colonel Carter of Cartersville
Francis Hopkinson Smith
An impoverished Virginia aristocrat chases grand financial schemes in New York, sustained only by supreme courtesy, devoted friends, and an indelible bond with his former slave.
Edith Lyle
Mary Jane Holmes
A young widow hides her secret past to marry into a proud, wealthy family, only to find her abandoned past living right on her new estate. The truth threatens to unravel her second chance at a respectable life.
Molly Brown's Post-Graduate Days
Nell Speed
A young woman steps from the security of college into the wide expanse of adult life, discovering that growing up is less a single moment than a quiet shift in how she sees the world.
Once to Every Man
Larry Evans
A lonely young man from a New England village must conquer the shadows of his family legacy and the harsh misjudgments of his neighbors to win the heart of the girl who shares his exile.
Sowing and Reaping: A Temperance Story
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
In a society that treats indulgence as a harmless social grace, every choice to compromise or take a stand ripples outward to touch unsuspecting lives.
The Brand of Silence: A Detective Story
Johnston McCulley
A mysterious warning note and a sudden murder frame a returned exile, forcing him to fight a shadowy conspiracy to save his life.
The Californiacs
Inez Haynes Gillmore
An affectionate critique of state pride that turns into a love letter to San Francisco.
The Cavaliers of Virginia, vol. 1 of 2
William Alexander Caruthers
A society built on royalist nostalgia divides against itself when old political hatreds, mysterious recluses, and hidden origins collide on the Virginia frontier.
The Last Stetson
Fox, John, Jr.
A young boy bearing the secret burden of a feud's final killing seeks redemption through self-sacrifice as a wandering preacher brings a fragile peace to the Kentucky mountains.
The Marryers: A History Gathered from a Brief of the Honorable Socrates Potter
Irving Bacheller
A Connecticut lawyer takes his client’s family to Europe, where he must protect an heiress from titled fortune-hunters while steering her toward an honest American heart.
The Millionaire Baby
Anna Katharine Green
A vanished heiress, a dark web of old secrets, and a web of deception spinning along the Hudson.
The Moon Metal
Garrett Putman Serviss
A sudden flood of Antarctic gold renders the global economy worthless until a mysterious scientist offers a strange, opalescent metal extracted from the heights of the Wyoming mountains.
The Ne'er-Do-Well
Rex Beach
A spoiled American heir is marooned penniless in Panama, where hard work, political intrigue, and sudden love turn a wasted life into something real.
The Secret Pact
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
A high-spirited teenage girl uncovers a web of arson, blackmail, and riverfront secrets after launching her own newspaper in a rival's abandoned plant.
The Torch Bearer: A Camp Fire Girls' Story
I. T. (Ida Treadwell) Thurston
A group of city girls learns that courage, work, and steady kindness can remake difficult young lives.
The Wide, Wide World
Susan Warner
Separated from her dying mother, a young girl must learn to navigate a cold, demanding world while clinging to her faith and forming her character through hardship, duty, and quiet resilience.
William Adolphus Turnpike
William Banks
An irreverent, wide-awake boy works his way up through the small-time politics, legal offices, and theater stages of turn-of-the-century Toronto.
Within these walls
Rupert Hughes
Driven by fear of the cholera, a young bride and groom flee to a quiet estate, only to discover that the darkest perils are those they build within their own home.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Part 7
Mark Twain
A modern American finds himself stranded in sixth-century Britain, where he uses nineteen-century technology and economic theories to challenge medieval custom, only to end up manacled alongside King Arthur in a slave convoy.
All He Knew: A Story
John Habberton
A simple man returns from prison with a singular, unshakeable faith, and his refusal to complicate it quietly unmasks the hypocrisy of an entire town.
An Adventure with a Genius: Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer
Alleyne Ireland
A blind, brilliant media titan rules an floating empire of intellect from the deck of his luxury yacht, driving a crew of exhausted personal secretaries to the brink of madness.
Avery
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
When a self-absorbed husband faces the imagined terror of his sick wife's death during an ether-induced hallucination, he awakens to a second chance at devotion.
O. Henryana: Seven Odds and Ends, Poetry and Short Stories
O. Henry
A gentle heart beats beneath every tough exterior.
Oh, Money! Money! A Novel
Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
A wealthy man, weary of his fortune’s isolation, goes undercover among his own distant relatives to see if money truly buys happiness. His experiment changes his life and the fortunes of those he studies.
Patty's Fortune
Carolyn Wells
Patty Fairfield faces a tangled web of romantic affection and sudden inheritance while navigating the social expectations of early twentieth-century upper-class life.
The curse of Clifton
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A stoic girl bound by honor and a prideful Virginia heir test whether devotion can endure deceit, warfare, and the heavy chains of rank.
The Golden Book of Springfield
Vachel Lindsay
A mystic in 1920 falls into a visionary trance, awakening nearly a century later in a transformed, utopian Illinois.
The raid of the guerilla: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of a ruthless soldier when her secret act of wartime mercy comes to light. In the rugged isolation of the Great Smoky Mountains, a single choice bridges the divide between enemies.
The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason
Melville Davisson Post
The human mind loves a problem with passion, peril, and the salt breath of the sea, demanding stories where ingenuity triumphs over drudgery without the aid of circumstance.