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American Literature — page 75
3,593 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 75 of 75.
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others
John Kendrick Bangs
A man in a sweltering New York bedroom begins to shiver uncontrollably, only to discover that the sudden chill in the air marks the arrival of an uninvited specter.
Gloucester Moors and Other Poems
William Vaughn Moody
A sea-swept shore opens into a wider expanse of national soul-searching, where natural beauty, social grievance, and private grief meet.
Know Thy Neighbor
Elisabeth R. Lewis
Living in San Francisco's Tenderloin district comes with cheap rent and rowdy streets, but the real nightmare is the quiet creature creeping down the apartment hall.
Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
High school girls on the American home front transform a small Midwestern town through organized patriotism, only to find that counteracting treason takes more than selling bonds.
Mr. Arnold: A romance of the Revolution
Francis Lynde
An impulsive young Virginia officer sneaks behind enemy lines on a desperate wartime gamble, only to find that catching a traitor is far easier than surviving the moral cost of the trap.
Oklahoma and Other Poems
Freeman Edwin Miller
A wild frontier springs to life through ringing meter, where the thunder of a land run yields to quiet farmsteads and the ache of memory.
One way out
Frederick Orin Bartlett
When a quiet middle-class clerk gets fired, he avoids financial ruin by packing his bags and emigrating to the city's immigrant slums to start over as a common ditch-digger.
Poems
Marietta Holley
A quiet collection of nineteenth-century verses where domestic tenderness, coastal mourning, and spiritual longing converge under the gentle shadow of loss.
Potts's Painless Cure: 1898
Edward Bellamy
A heartless college experiment in romantic disenchantment backfires spectacularly when a young man tries to save his sweetheart from a broken heart.
Ralph Raymond's Heir
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Driven by sudden wealth, a desperate merchant hires a calculating drug clerk to eliminate a rival and discard his young heir, only for their dark alliance to unravel through extortion, miraculous survival, and exposed secrets.
Rhoda of the Underground
Florence Finch Kelly
Across a divided nation on the brink of civil war, a young Northern woman must choose between her devotion to a handsome Southern slaveholder and her moral duty to the Underground Railroad.
Roughing It, Part 7
Mark Twain
A restless narrator wanders from California’s exhausted goldfields to the lush ports of the Hawaiian Islands, recording the absurdities, eccentricities, and cultural clashes of the nineteenth-century Pacific world.
Shadows of Shasta
Joaquin Miller
In the shadow of Mount Shasta, helpless people are hunted down under the cover of law, their only crime being that their presence frustrates greedy settlers and corrupt government agents.
The Backwoods Boy
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Born in a humble wilderness cabin, a self-taught frontier youth works his way from manual labor and small-town law offices to the White House, guiding a fractured nation through civil war with unyielding integrity.
The decadent
Ralph Adams Cram
An idealist surrenders to the beauty of a dying world, choosing art and stillness over a hopeless war for reform.
The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock
Anna Katharine Green
A midnight gun fires in a quiet New York block, leaving a neighbor dead and a blind physician confessing to a crime no one believes he could physically commit.
The Gilded Age, Part 7
Mark Twain
Speculative madness and political grift collide in a society where fortunes are chased on paper, laws are bought in secret, and moral ruin awaits anyone naive enough to believe the promises of the age.
The Land of Lure: A Story of the Columbia River Basin
Elliott Smith
An unsparing yet hopeful portrait of homesteaders battling the harsh elements of the Columbia River Basin.
The Mansion
Henry Van Dyke
The mansion of one’s soul is not built of stone, nor is it measured by the ledger of one’s earthly success. A life defined by careful calculation finds its true, humble inventory only when all worldly credit is stripped away.
The New Minister's Great Opportunity: First published in the "Century Magazine"
Heman White Chaplin
A young, small-town minister faces a quiet crisis of rhetoric when tasked with preaching a funeral sermon for an unremarkable centenarian whose only distinct legacy was living a very long time.
Under the Liberty Tree: A Story of The 'Boston Massacre'
James Otis
In 1770, four Boston boys find themselves caught in the escalating tension between British troops and local citizens, culminating in a tragedy that alters the course of American history.
When the Yule Log Burns: A Christmas Story
Leona Dalrymple
A warmth that smells of cedar wood and spice carries through every line of this small, bright story of old-fashioned cheer.
A Charmed Life
Richard Harding Davis
A young war correspondent leaves for the Spanish-American War armed with a playful vow: that his lover's devotion forms an invincible talisman shielding him from harm.
Death of a Spaceman
Walter M. Miller
A former space blastman faces his final hours in a shabby apartment, clinging to his memories and his stubborn pride while his family and neighbors prepare for the future.
Hills of the Shatemuc
Susan Warner
Two farm-reared brothers pursue radically different paths to adulthood, bound by the quiet moral weight of their rural New York home.
Mischievous Maid Faynie
Laura Jean Libbey
Two broad-shouldered young men brave a roaring Manhattan blizzard, setting in motion a breathless tale of stolen identities, attempted murder, and resilient young love.
Nibsy's Christmas
Jacob A. (Jacob August) Riis
Child newsboys, destitute families, and homeless boys search for warmth, safety, and a sliver of holiday joy across the freezing, neglected tenement blocks of nineteenth-century New York.
Prairie-Dog Town
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
Two young prairie children slip away from a dull picnic, wander over the rolling Dakota plains, and shrink down to step inside the hidden, surprisingly sophisticated underground world of a prairie-dog village.
Ragged Lady
William Dean Howells
A New England country girl enters the glittering, confusing world of transatlantic high society, retaining a stubborn integrity through every change of fortune.
Roger Davis, Loyalist
Frank Baird
A displaced Massachusetts teenager survives imprisonment, wilderness flight, and exile to pioneer a prosperous new life along the Canadian frontier.
Stories about Indians
Anonymous
A brief, illuminating look into Native American life, this collection presents vivid vignettes of tactical ingenuity, steadfast honor, quiet grief, and sharp wit.
Sylph Etherege: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A tenderly nurtured orphan escapes into an ideal vision of her absent betrothed, only to have her fragile inner world shattered by a cruel deception.
The Amethyst Box
Anna Katharine Green
She knew the small vial contained a single drop of deadly poison, yet as she held it above her aunt’s bedside, a sudden cry shattered the midnight silence.
The Choir Invisible
James Lane Allen
A young wilderness schoolmaster navigates the pulls of honor, backwoods danger, and forbidden love in 1790s Kentucky.
The Ear in the Wall
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A high-stakes campaign against a corrupt political machine explodes when a young secretary disappears with a dangerous secret.
The Midnight Passenger
Richard Savage
A young New York courier carrying a fortune in cash vanishes into the damp city shadows, leaving behind a web of stolen identities, fraudulent wills, and cold-blooded murder.
The Mystery of the Secret Band
Edith Lavell
Eighteen-year-old Mary Louise Gay postpones her school vacation to take a paying assignment for her father's agency, posing as an ordinary guest in a Philadelphia women's hotel to unmask a serial thief.
The Narrow House
Evelyn Scott
A house full of quiet, desperate resentments becomes a pressure cooker for three generations trapped under one decaying roof.
The Seventh Noon
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Desperate to escape a life of empty failure, a young man buys seven days of absolute, unsparing freedom by taking what he believes to be a slow-acting poison.
Victor Ollnee's Discipline
Hamlin Garland
A collegiate athlete discovers his mother is a professional medium, thrusting him into a conflict between his skeptical, modern worldview and the inexplicable, haunting phenomena that define her life and eventually claim it.
Youth Challenges
Clarence Budington Kelland
A rich heir breaks from his family's rigid industrial dynasty to forged a life and career on his own terms.