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American Literature — page 71
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 71 of 101.
Three People
Pansy
This is a moral tale of three disparate lives—a wealthy heir, a homeless boy, and a neglected soul—colliding in the pursuit of sobriety and purpose. It is a story of how small acts of faith and the discipline of a "pledge" can fundamentally reconstruct a human life.
A Man and a Woman
Stanley Waterloo
A boy rescues a nest of sparrows from a pair of black-snakes, grows into a timber-splitter with a penchant for knight-errantry, and eventually finds a companion who matches his restless, high-spirited mind.
A Prairie Infanta
Eva Wilder Brodhead
A lonely Colorado woman adopts a grieving child, unknowingly tethering her quiet life to the volatile fortunes of a wandering father.
Azalea: The Story of a Little Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Elia Wilkinson Peattie
A young girl abandoned by a traveling show troupe finds sanctuary with a mountain family, only to face a difficult choice between her humble, loving new home and a future of wealth and opportunity.
Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession: A Novel
Benjamin Wood
The shadows of the American Civil War fall heavy upon personal loyalties in this tale of fractured kinship and ideological strife. It captures the desperate struggle to maintain love and individual conscience when a nation descends into violent, brother-against-brother conflict.
From the Ranks
Charles King
Suspicion, scandal, and a midnight gun-shot shatter the quiet routine of a post-Civil War garrison, leaving a proud regiment torn between its rigid code of honor and the shadowy secrets of those who serve within its gates.
Going-to-the-Sun
Vachel Lindsay
A surreal, illustrated journey through the high peaks of Glacier Park, this work blends mountain-climbing memoirs with whimsical, self-invented hieroglyphics and flights of poetic fancy.
Holly: The Romance of a Southern Girl
Ralph Henry Barbour
The story of an impressionable young woman and a weary traveler finding common ground, this quiet, character-driven romance explores the intersection of Southern tradition and new beginnings.
In the Arena: Stories of Political Life
Booth Tarkington
An old political insider's clear-eyed tour through the backrooms, saloons, and statehouses where ordinary Americans fight, fail, and bargain for power.
Intermere
William Alexander Taylor
This narrative presents a vision of a lost, technologically advanced civilization existing in a hidden, terrestrial paradise, offering a critique of turn-of-the-century Western society through the eyes of a bewildered visitor.
Jane Cable
George Barr McCutcheon
A high-society secret threatens to tear two Chicago lovers apart when past sins catch up with their families.
Molly, the Drummer Boy: A Story of the Revolution
Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock
A neglected girl disguises herself as a drummer boy to join the Revolutionary War, seeking her lost father and a place where her spirit might finally belong.
Mr. Scraggs
Henry Wallace Phillips
A rambling, colorful raconteur finds himself perpetually caught between his own restless instincts and the inescapable, often absurd complications of life in the American West. He survives by his wits, a talent for tall tales, and a steadfast refusal to take anything—especially himself—too seriously.
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
This collection captures the fleeting echoes of a vanishing American landscape, preserving the ghosts, superstitions, and folk memories that once haunted the hills and harbors of the original thirteen colonies.
Nick Carter Stories No. 150, July 24, 1915: The House of Fear
Nicholas (House name) Carter
The House of Fear presents a breathless, low-stakes period thriller where a legendary detective navigates a maze of urban deception. It serves as a quintessential example of the early twentieth-century American pulp serial, where pace and artifice reign supreme.
Perfection City
Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards) Orpen
A young bride discovers that the promise of a utopian life on the Kansas prairie is quickly complicated by isolation, rigid social control, and the harsh realities of frontier justice.
Richard Judkins' Wooing: A Tale of Virginia in the Revolution
T. Jenkins (Thornton Jenkins) Hains
A Virginia gentleman’s quiet life is upended when the Revolution ignites, forcing him to balance ancestral codes of honor with the chaotic, violent realities of war.
The Alternative
George Barr McCutcheon
A shiftless socialite decides to abandon his idle, "butterfly" life for the dignity of hard work, only to discover that the woman of his dreams has been waiting for him since childhood.
The Christmas Story from David Harum
Edward Noyes Westcott
Generosity wears a rough coat in a small upstate town, where a sharp-witted banker turned horse-trader uses a quiet Christmas morning to settle an old score and rewrite a widow's desperate future.
The Fighting Scrub
Ralph Henry Barbour
A young boy finds his place at a demanding boarding school by joining the ranks of the "scrub" team, the unsung group that trains to help the varsity squad succeed.
The Man of Letters as a Man of Business
William Dean Howells
THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS is a candid examination of the tension between the artistic impulse and the cold reality of the marketplace. It explores how authors must navigate the dual, often conflicting roles of creator and breadwinner.
The phantoms of the foot-bridge: 1895
Charles Egbert Craddock
The phantoms of the foot-bridge: 1895 is a haunting, atmospheric exploration of guilt, class, and the lingering echoes of the past. It follows an haunted, fleeing stranger and his encounter with a mountain family, where ghosts are as real as the landscape itself.
Try Again
Oliver Optic
A resilient young orphan confronts poverty and false accusations in this classic tale of moral fortitude. By choosing integrity over convenience, he transforms his struggles into a path toward a better life.
Two Boys and a Fortune
Matthew White
A sudden inheritance and a hidden truth entangle two brothers in a web of anxiety and moral crisis. This story explores how a windfall can test the bonds of family and the weight of conscience.
Watch and Wait
Oliver Optic
The young fugitives Dandy, Lily, and Cyd navigate treacherous waters and persistent slave-hunters in a desperate bid for liberty. Through courage and resourcefulness, they transform from bondmen into the masters of their own destiny.
A Far Country
Winston Churchill
Success is often a cold, calculated climb that leaves the conscience behind in the dust of the valley. This narrative follows a man’s ascent to power and the moral erosion that accompanies his journey through the American Gilded Age.
A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories
Mary Hallock Foote
The stifling heat of the American West acts as a catalyst for hidden truths, forcing characters to confront the shadows of their pasts and the fragility of their current lives.
A Woman of Yesterday
Caroline Atwater Mason
This story of a woman’s journey from a rigid, pious upbringing to a mature, complex understanding of love and human frailty captures the quiet desperation of a life caught between duty and desire.
Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
These rhythmic ballads capture the salt-sprayed lives of Cape Cod villagers, blending the dangerous realities of the seafaring life with the quiet, nostalgic humor of small-town domesticity.
Doctor Izard
Anna Katharine Green
A man of shadows and silence retreats from the world, only to find his past exhumed by a desperate impostor. In this haunting tale, long-buried secrets and the heavy weight of regret collide in a quiet village.
Home Again with Me
James Whitcomb Riley
A father’s weary heart finds sudden relief as his daughter returns from her long schooling, bridging the gap between his lonely, aging life and the vibrant memory of her mother.
Pen Pictures, of Eventful Scenes and Struggles of Life
B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Craig
This chronicle of the American frontier weaves the rough lives of wood-choppers and pioneers into a sweeping, cautionary tapestry of greed, inheritance, and the shifting fortunes of a young nation.
Prince or Chauffeur? A Story of Newport
Lawrence Perry
An American naval officer goes undercover as a chauffeur to stop a foreign prince from smuggling military secrets out of a Newport estate.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 44, June, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures a pivotal moment in American history, blending creative literature, political commentary, and the immediate, urgent pulse of a nation sliding into civil war.
The Drummer Boy
J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge
A fiery fourteen-year-old leaves his family sitting-room for the Union barracks, trading his dark curls for a recruit’s crop and a place at the front line of a nation tearing itself apart.
The eleventh hour in the life of Julia Ward Howe
Maud Howe Elliott
A portrait of tireless vitality, this memoir captures a legendary figure who, well into her nineties, remained a vibrant force of intellect, activism, and infectious joy until her final breath.
The Heart of the Desert (Kut-Le of the Desert)
Honoré Morrow
HOOK A young woman is abducted by a man who bridges two worlds, forcing her to confront the raw, unforgiving majesty of the American Southwest and the hidden depths of her own character.
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844: Volume 23, Number 3
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany captures the restless intellectual spirit of its era, blending philosophical inquiry, travelogue, and social critique into a dense, multifaceted portrait of the Victorian imagination.
The Master Rogue: The Confessions of a Croesus
David Graham Phillips
This account follows a self-made millionaire as he ruthlessly consolidates his fortune, his family, and his social standing, only to find himself hollowed out by the very ambition that built his empire.
Westerfelt
Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben
The ghosts of past mistakes haunt a man’s pursuit of a new life, turning the quiet valleys of rural Georgia into a landscape of suspicion, violence, and hard-won redemption.
A Cigarette Clew
Nicholas (House name) Carter
A stolen mining fortune, a deadly setup on a night ferry, and a relentless pursuit across state lines.
A Foregone Conclusion
William Dean Howells
A lonely Venetian priest, yearning for a life beyond his stifling vows, pins his fragile hopes on a visiting American woman. This quiet, melancholic drama explores the intersection of longing, cultural misunderstanding, and the painful impossibility of self-reinvention.
Anything Once
Isabel Ostrander
A bruised young man with a secret name and a girl fleeing her past hit the dusty American road together, learning to trust each other one step at a time.
Blindfold
Orrick Johns
When secret parentage collides with small-town morality, two generations must navigate the quiet lies that protect a family’s respectability.
Cast Adrift
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
A desperate struggle for survival unfolds in the shadow of urban decay, where the machinations of the wicked collide with the fragile hopes of a family torn apart by malice and addiction.
Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the War
George Cary Eggleston
The quiet, tradition-bound life of a Virginia plantation becomes the crucible for an intellectual and romantic awakening as a young woman discovers her own agency on the eve of the American Civil War.
Minnie's Sacrifice
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Courage, devotion, and racial pride guide a young woman who chooses solidarity with her oppressed people over a life of hidden privilege.
Sink or Swim
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Left fatherless and penniless in a small New England town, a determined teenager resolves to adopt a bold personal motto, braving deceit, shanghaiing, and gold-mine hardships to protect his vulnerable family.