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American Literature — page 84
4,505 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 84 of 94.
Shotgun gold
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
When a cattle detective arrives in a lawless cow-town to untangle a web of murder, corruption, and old grudges, justice takes a deeply unexpected turn.
The Little Washington's Relatives
Lillian Elizabeth Roy
Philadelphia cousins arrive for a long visit in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, sparking an imaginative summer of historical reenactments, playful raids, and lively debates over the American Revolution.
The Missionary Sheriff: Being incidents in the life of a plain man who tried to do his duty
Octave Thanet
A rugged Western sheriff balances the iron demands of the law with a quiet, persistent mercy for the broken souls caught in its gears.
The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A century of domestic memory and public turmoil comes alive through the eyes of a Boston poet who finds grace in daily life and moral clarity in his nation's greatest crisis.
The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
On the moonlit steps of a Salem municipal building at midnight, two personified sisters exchange final thoughts on the human condition before one vanishes forever into history and the other steps into the mortal world.
The Toy Shop: A Romantic Story of Lincoln the Man
Margarita Spalding Gerry
Burdened by the human cost of the Civil War, an anguished leader finds unexpected counsel and solace inside a humble neighborhood toy shop.
The Twenty-Fourth of June: Midsummer's Day
Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond
A wealthy young man finds a new purpose after stumbling into a traditional family home, where he sheds his aimless habits to win the heart of a spirited teacher.
Who Was Paul Grayson?
John Habberton
A quiet new boy arrives at a village school, hiding a heavy secret that eventually shatters the boys' romantic fantasies and tests their loyalties.
Within the Golden Gate: A Souvenir of San Francisco Bay
Laura Ann Young Pinney
Fair skies and tranquil seas invite travelers through the Golden Gate to explore the historic shores, towering redwoods, and thriving cities of San Francisco Bay.
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.
A Fool There Was
Porter Emerson Browne
A wealthy man is drawn into a destructive affair with a woman who consumes his soul and ruins his life. This dark tale chronicles the inevitable decay of a man who abandons his family to follow a siren.
A Rebellious Heroine
John Kendrick Bangs
An author finds his fictional creation has a mind of her own, leading to a battle of wills that blurs the line between the page and the person. This lighthearted satire on the creative process explores the struggle between an artist’s rigid plans and the unpredictable nature of his characters.
Confessions of a Summer Colonist (from Literature and Life)
William Dean Howells
The season is ending in the little summer settlement on the Down East coast, where the air grows sharper and the sense of the place’s peculiar charm becomes more poignant. A quiet observer lingers as the colony thins, reflecting on the transitory nature of this American idyll and the inevitable pull of the city.
Elsie Marley, Honey
Joslyn Gray
Two teenage namesakes swap lives on a train bound for New England, discovering that taking on another girl's world reveals who they are meant to be.
Eve's Diary, Part 3
Mark Twain
A playful yet deeply moving re-imagining of the Creation, this diary captures the wonder of discovery, the friction between two complementary minds, and the quiet weight of enduring love.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, August 1847
Various
This collection of nineteenth-century prose and poetry captures the earnest, moralizing spirit of the era’s periodical culture. Through maritime adventure, domestic instruction, and sentimental verse, the magazine serves as a mirror to the anxieties and social codes of its time.
More Stories of Married Life
Mary Stewart Cutting
Domestic life in the early 1900s often hinged on small, invisible sacrifices, from the anxiety of a husband missing his train to the quiet burden of maintaining a home. These stories capture the subtle tensions, minor triumphs, and persistent emotional labor that define the everyday experience of marriage.
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
These haunting fragments capture the American West not through historical record, but through the enduring, blood-stained folklore of its diverse peoples.
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.
Tar-Heel Tales in Vernacular Verse
J. E. P. (John Edward Parker) Doyle
These vernacular verses capture the rough-hewn humor and stark hardships of post-Civil War North Carolina, as told by a sharp-tongued veteran who observed the era’s shifting social tides with a wary, watchful eye.
The Diamond Lens
Fitz James O'Brien
Driven by an obsessive, monomaniacal thirst for scientific discovery, a brilliant young microscopist commits murder to secure the means of peering into a hidden, microscopic realm of terrifying, impossible beauty.
The Inside of the Cup
Winston Churchill
A rigid, traditional clergyman finds his faith and his conscience colliding with the ruthless financial power of his own wealthy parishioners. He must decide whether to protect the status quo or risk everything for a radical, authentic Christianity.
The modern writer
Sherwood Anderson
A meditation on the peril of commercial success, this work challenges the aspiring artist to choose between the hollow rewards of the marketplace and the difficult, solitary integrity of true craftsmanship.
The Norsk Nightingale
William Frederick Kirk
A collection of humorous dialect verses brings the rough-and-tumble world of the American lumberjack to life, reimagining classic literature and personal anecdotes through a distinct Scandinavian-American lens.
The world-mover
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
HOOK After a laboratory accident fractures reality into competing timelines, a physicist must navigate a ghostly, overlapping existence to prevent the total destruction of his world.
The Young Mountaineers: Short Stories
Charles Egbert Craddock
High above a deep, wild ravine, jutting summits almost meet to frame a dark cutout of the open sky.
Vallisneria madness
Ralph Milne Farley
A young man’s fascination with the strange, fatal mating habits of a rare aquatic plant pulls him into a moonlight encounter that blurs the boundary between botanical biology and human longing.
Wampum and Old Gold
Hervey Allen
The haunting echoes of a lost generation define this collection, where the vivid beauty of the natural world collides with the shattering, cold reality of the Great War.
A Little Girl in Old Chicago
Amanda M. Douglas
A quiet, domestic chronicle of a young girl coming of age in the muddy, burgeoning frontier of nineteenth-century Chicago, this book captures the transition from wilderness to bustling metropolis through the eyes of its heroine. It is a nostalgic, gentle portrait of a vanished world.
Anti-Slavery Poems 2.: Part 2 From Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
These urgent, rhythmic verses act as a moral trumpet call, rallying a divided nation to confront the encroaching shadow of human bondage during the mid-nineteenth century.
Ariel Dances
Ethel Cook Eliot
A young woman arrives in New York carrying only the legacy of her late father’s art, finding herself adrift in a world of wealth and restlessness until she discovers where she truly belongs.
Campfire Girls' Outing
Stella M. Francis
A young woman sheds the superficial expectations of her social circle to pursue a life of self-reliance, purpose, and community service.
Goose Creek Folks: A Story of the Kentucky Mountains
Isabel Graham Bush
A determined group of Kentucky mountain youth strive for an education, finding that the true challenge of progress is not just acquiring knowledge, but carrying it back to the home they love.
Loveliness: A Story
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A silver-haired terrier and a frail, beloved child are bound by an unbreakable devotion, until a dark, hidden threat from the world of science tears them apart. This poignant story explores the profound, unspoken language of love between a small girl and her devoted protector.
Lummox
Fannie Hurst
A giant of a woman moves through a world that refuses to see her, carrying the secrets of her own spirit in a life defined by the labor of others.
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.
Patty Fairfield
Carolyn Wells
A fourteen-year-old girl journeys across the North, visiting various households to learn the ways of the world before she and her father reunite to build a permanent home.
Sketches New and Old, Part 5
Mark Twain
Beneath the veneer of a humorist’s sketches lies a sharp, restless mind observing the absurdities of human belief and the strange, stubborn persistence of fraud.
Sunny Boy and His Playmates
Ramy Allison White
When six-year-old Sunny Boy Horton steps out into the winter air, everyday childhood adventures unexpectedly turn into high-stakes rescues, lost grandfathers, trapped horses, and runaway barns.
That House I Bought: A little leaf from life
Henry Edward Warner
The purchase of a first home is a chaotic, sentimental, and often hilarious rite of passage that reshapes one’s view of the world. Through the lens of one couple’s domestic adventure, a portrait emerges of the profound, taxing, and ultimately life-affirming commitment to owning a piece of the earth.
The long march
William Styron
The military machine, when set in motion by a leader’s whim, transforms men into instruments of suffering. This stark account of a forced march exposes the fragile sanity of soldiers caught between pride, duty, and the crushing weight of authority.
The Lords of High Decision
Meredith Nicholson
The iron-wrought landscape of a great industrial city shapes the destinies of a fractured family, testing whether the weight of one’s inheritance can be shed for a life of honest purpose. A wayward son and a resilient woman from the mines find their paths entwined, forced to reconcile their past mistakes against…
The Story of Patsy
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A battered, street-wise boy finds a moment of beauty and belonging in a crowded San Francisco classroom.
Under Fire: A Tale of New England Village Life
Frank Andrew Munsey
Driven by small-town rivalry and malicious frame-ups, a principled young clerk faces disgrace, mill labor, and false accusations before proving his innocence and winning back the girl he loves.
A Village Ophelia, and Other Stories
Anne Reeve Aldrich
A collection of melancholic, late-nineteenth-century tales, these stories explore the quiet desperation of sensitive souls trapped by poverty, unrequited love, and the crushing weight of societal expectation.
An Art Shop in Greenwich Village
Ray Cummings
Step into a dim Greenwich Village curiosity shop where a sinister old art dealer harbors a grotesque secret, draining his young model's lifeblood to feed an unnatural canvas.
Be young again!
Murray Leinster
An aging confidence man and his sixteen-year-old technical assistant target a ruthless former bootlegger with a fake elixir of youth, only to find the tables turned by unexpected biology.
Bluffer's luck
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A weary city girl arrives in a dusty cattle town to impersonate a ranch heiress, walking straight into a web of old grudges, hidden identities, and calculated murder.