Free summaries
American Literature — page 82
4,505 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 82 of 94.
The Co-Citizens
Corra Harris
A wealthy widow’s final will ignites a quiet, tactical revolution in a small Southern town, forcing men and women alike to confront the realities of power, property, and the ballot.
The Great American Novel
William Carlos Williams
If you seek a conventional story, this book will surely disappoint; if you crave the raw, unvarnished pulse of a young nation finding its own language, it may be the most important thing you ever read.
The Land of Content
Edith Barnard Delano
A restless young woman finds unexpected clarity and love in a remote mountain community, realizing that the true land of content is not a place, but a state of the heart.
The Miller Of Old Church
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
The path of love in a quiet Virginia community is seldom straight, often colliding with the rigid, unforgiving architecture of social class and the heavy, haunting weight of family secrets.
The Pool of Stars
Cornelia Meigs
HOOK A determined young student and a resourceful boy join forces to save a fragile family legacy from ruin and mystery.
The Return
H. Beam Piper
HOOK Two explorers from a technologically salvaged future encounter a primitive, isolated society in the ruins of Pittsburgh that has built a bizarre, quasi-religious mythology around Sherlock Holmes.
The Starbucks
Opie Percival Read
A rugged tale of mountain pride and sudden romance, this story follows the collision between an isolated Appalachian family and the encroaching world of federal law.
Una of the hill country: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
The mountain air carries more than just the scent of pine; it holds the echo of a secret voice that upends a community and launches two young lovers into an unlikely, glittering spotlight.
Widger's Quotations from the Project Gutenberg Editions of Paine's Writings on Mark Twain
Albert Bigelow Paine
This collection serves as a comprehensive index of the wit and wisdom extracted from a monumental biographical project. It offers a structured guide to the life and mind of one of history’s most influential literary figures.
Wits' End
Amy Ella Blanchard
A young woman finds unexpected sanctuary and romance among the craggy, tide-swept islands of the Maine coast, where the rhythm of the sea defines both her friendships and her future.
All's for the Best
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
HOOK True faith is found not in outward religious performance, but in the quiet, often painful, labor of neighborly love and self-denial.
Blotted Out
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
The world is a cold place for a man who demands to be left alone, until he is drawn into a web of secrets that demands he forfeit everything to save a stranger.
Concerning Belinda
Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd
A young teacher navigates the stifling decorum of a private boarding school, finding that life among adolescent girls is as unpredictable as it is demanding.
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.
Garry Grayson's football rivals
Edward Stratemeyer
This is a classic 1920s sports novel about a high-school quarterback navigating the intense rivalries, moral dilemmas, and athletic challenges of the football season. It focuses on the struggle for fair play in a world where underhanded tactics threaten the integrity of the game.
His Sombre Rivals
Edward Payson Roe
Two lifelong friends love the same woman, only for war to shatter their triangle and leave the survivor to rescue her from the brink of total madness.
Hope Leslie
Catharine Maria Sedgwick
A young woman defies the rigid piety of 17th-century Massachusetts to rescue an Indigenous friend, challenging the narrow moral boundaries of her colonial society.
In the three zones
Frederic Jesup Stimson
This collection of three distinct narratives explores the collision between human passion and the cold, unyielding structures of the world—whether they be mechanical, social, or historical.
Marion Darche: A Story Without Comment
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a deceitful financier must navigate the wreckage of his public disgrace and the lingering, dangerous presence of his past.
Mr. Crewe's Career
Winston Churchill
A wealthy amateur politician attempts to reform a state government dominated by a railroad monopoly, setting the stage for a collision between naive idealism and entrenched, cynical power.
Songs of the Silent World, and Other Poems
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
The barrier between the living and the dead is porous, held thin by the persistent, aching persistence of human love. These verses reach across that chasm, seeking to translate the profound silence of loss into a language of hope.
The Clock Strikes Thirteen
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
Masked night riders terrorize local farmers until a spunky teenage reporter manipulates a local clock tower to trap the culprits.
The Law of the Land: Of Miss Lady, Whom It Involved in Mystery, and of John Eddring, Gentleman of the South, Who Read Its Deeper Meaning: A Novel
Emerson Hough
A young woman searches for her true identity against the backdrop of a volatile, post-Reconstruction South. In this world of shifting loyalties and encroaching industry, she finds that truth is as hard to pin down as the floodwaters of the Mississippi.
Their Yesterdays
Harold Bell Wright
Childhood sweethearts grow into solitary adults in a bustling city, finding their way back to love by honoring the quiet lessons of their shared past.
A Rill from the Town Pump
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This piece of writing transforms a mundane municipal fixture into a vibrant, outspoken commentator on human nature, temperance, and the history of a New England town. It offers a whimsical yet earnest look at the virtue of simplicity.
Blister Jones
John Taintor Foote
The track is a world unto itself, a place where the high stakes of the racing game are played out by men who live on the margins and horses that run on heart. These linked stories capture the grit, the humor, and the quiet dignity of a life lived in the stables and the betting rings.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2, No. 18, March, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
This collection captures the irreverent spirit of 1920s American humor, offering a sprawling mix of jokes, anecdotes, and observations that reflect the anxieties and distractions of the post-war era. It serves as a time capsule of a specific, rowdy brand of pop culture.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 3, No. 28, December, 1921: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
The December 1921 edition of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang offers a frenetic, irreverent snapshot of early Prohibition-era America, capturing a nation navigating the tension between traditional morality and a new, restless appetite for urban vice and wit.
Harvard episodes
Charles Macomb Flandrau
Harvard is not just a university; it is a closed society governed by unspoken codes, and these interconnected stories map the delicate, often cruel, friction between those who belong and those who merely reside within its gates.
Helpfully Yours
Evelyn E. Smith
This satirical science-fiction story follows a young, idealistic Fizbian woman, Tarb Morfatch, as she arrives on Earth to work as an advice columnist for a colonial newspaper, only to find her own people’s cultural practices and bureaucratic deceptions are more stifling than the planet she is meant to observe.
Home Lights and Shadows
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
HOME! How at the word, a crowd of pleasant thoughts awaken. Yet, there is no home without its shadows as well as sunshine, and it is rarely that we confess our faults without a resolution to overcome the evil.
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.
Little Alfred
L. A. (Lydia Austin) Holdich
A gentle, instructive narrative, this book gathers stories of childhood obedience and faith, using the quiet rhythm of family life and biblical allegory to encourage young readers toward a life of devotion and moral clarity.
Madelon: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The quietude of a snow-bound village is shattered by a violent act of passion, setting in motion a dark drama where honor, self-sacrifice, and the tangled roots of love collide.
Men I'm Not Married To
Franklin P. (Franklin Pierce) Adams
HOOK A series of wry, observational sketches mapping the minor personality quirks and social habits that keep a bachelor safely single.
Myra
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A daughter’s lifelong crusade against powerful interests to reclaim her birthright, this narrative blends historical intrigue with the intimate, often tragic, struggles of a woman navigating a world of betrayal and hidden wills.
Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun
David A. Curtis
Poker players, lawyers, and scoundrels populate these vignettes, each centered on a high-stakes game that inevitably spirals toward a life-altering conclusion. This collection captures a vanishing era of American social life where the turn of a card often served as the final arbiter of personal honor, professional…
The Calico Cat
Charles Miner Thompson
A nervous village busybody and a misunderstood boy become entangled in a web of pride and secrecy following an accidental, late-night gunshot. This quiet, observant mystery captures the small-town tensions of a New England village at the turn of the twentieth century.
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 Sagebrusher: A Story of the West
Emerson Hough
In this rugged Western, a displaced city woman and a simple-hearted homesteader navigate a marriage born of a ruse, finding redemption against the backdrop of a changing, violent frontier.
The Very Small Person
Annie Hamilton Donnell
A series of gentle, interconnected sketches reveals the inner lives of children living in the shadow of adult indifference, showing how their small hearts yearn for the simple, transformative power of being wanted.
There was an old woman—
Robert Silverberg
The lives of thirty-one identical brothers are meticulously scripted by a mother determined to prove that environment, not heredity, defines the soul. The resulting experiment, however, carries a price that only the sons can pay.
A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat
Burton Egbert Stevenson
HOOK This historical narrative traces the formative, often painful, experiences of a young Virginian soldier serving under George Washington during the disastrous military campaigns of the mid-eighteenth century.
A Spinner in the Sun
Myrtle Reed
A woman hiding a disfigured past behind a veil finds her reclusive life disrupted by the arrival of a spirited young girl and a man who refuses to look away. This quiet, evocative narrative explores the weight of long-held secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness.
Elsie at the World's Fair
Martha Finley
A devout, closely-knit family travels by private yacht to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, finding that the wonders of human invention only heighten their reverence for the divine.
Flip's "Islands of Providence"
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
The shifting tides of fortune are merely hidden stepping stones to those who trust in the unseen, a truth learned by a young man facing his first, most bitter trials.
L.P.M
J. Stewart (John Stewart) Barney
The inventor of a weapon so powerful it can end the Great War arrives in Europe, forced to navigate a web of spies and royal intrigue to impose peace upon warring nations.
Songs of the Mexican Seas
Joaquin Miller
A haunting, lyrical meditation on greed and memory, set against the backdrop of a volatile, sun-drenched landscape where historical ghosts and living secrets collide.