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American Literature — page 85
4,619 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 85 of 97.
Ormond
Charles Brockden Brown
An orphaned woman faces ruin, pestilence, and a seductive nihilist who believes his superior intellect exempts him from human morality.
Patty Blossom
Carolyn Wells
Patty Fairfield, a spirited young socialite with a penchant for high-spirited mischief, navigates the complexities of courtship and the demands of high society. As she finds herself caught between the persistent, earnest attentions of two very different men, she must determine where her own heart truly lies.
Roughing It, Part 2
Mark Twain
A sweeping overland journey transforms from a romantic adventure into a dusty test of endurance across the rugged American West.
Summerfield
Day Kellogg Lee
HOOK A testament to the quiet dignity of rural labor, this narrative follows a pioneer family whose deep connection to their land serves as a fortress against both natural dangers and the deceptive lures of urban ambition.
The Adventures of Ann: Stories of Colonial Times
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
A child bound out to service in eighteenth-century Massachusetts carves a life of fierce, vibrant independence from the rigid demands of Puritan duty.
The Ghost in the Tower: An Episode in Jacobia
Earl H. (Earl Howell) Reed
A winter night in a remote water tower becomes the site of a spectral conversation, as a traveler encounters a centuries-old Hungarian nobleman with a cynical perspective on human greed.
The Truth About Tristrem Varick: A Novel
Edgar Saltus
A man of refined sensibilities becomes trapped in a harrowing web of family scandal, romantic obsession, and a singular, fatal necessity.
To Whom This May Come: 1898
Edward Bellamy
A castaway wakes on a remote shore where no one speaks, only to learn he has landed among a telepathic civilization that views human speech as an obsolete relic.
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.
Blank?
Randall Garrett
HOOK A journalist wakes up in New York with a massive hole in his memory and a fortune in his pocket. He discovers that his own handwriting is guiding him through a temporal anomaly he doesn't yet understand.
Gypsy Breynton
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
This lively portrait of a spirited girl navigating the expectations of 19th-century girlhood captures the friction between a vibrant, restless nature and the rigid social codes of her era.
Janice Day, the Young Homemaker
Helen Beecher Long
A young woman assumes the mantle of domestic management in her father’s home, navigating neighborhood gossip, unreliable help, and a series of mysteries that threaten their security.
Jolly Sally Pendleton
Laura Jean Libbey
A young man’s impulsive, accidental proposal to a flighty socialite traps him in a loveless marriage, while his true love, a virtuous tenement girl, suffers through a series of dramatic abductions and betrayals. This quintessential dime novel, a frantic whirlwind of lost memories, secret missions, and sudden…
Life on the Mississippi, Part 11
Mark Twain
The river remains, but the people who once defined its banks have drifted into memory, leaving behind a world transformed by the passage of time and the erosion of innocence.
Mike Flannery On Duty and Off
Ellis Parker Butler
Mike Flannery is an express agent whose literal-minded devotion to corporate rules leads him into absurd, high-stakes battles with bureaucratic indifference and oddball visitors.
Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings
Annie Hamilton Donnell
Theodosia Baxter, a world-weary traveler returning to her quiet, empty home, finds her solitary life unexpectedly invaded by a spirited neighborhood of children, ultimately discovering a capacity for love she thought long buried.
My Queen: A Weekly Journal for Young Women. Issue 5, October 27, 1900: Marion Marlowe Entrapped
Lurana Sheldon
This tale of a young woman’s perilous ascent in the New York opera scene pits innocence against the cutthroat machinations of those threatened by her sudden, natural rise to fame.
Nick Carter Stories No. 157, September 11, 1915: A human counterfeit
Nicholas (House name) Carter
HOOK When a hotel manager is abducted and replaced by a perfect double, the famous detective must unmask a criminal mastermind before a false identity becomes a permanent reality.
Poems
Henry Reed Conant
A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t. This collection captures a young man’s earnest, early attempts to find his voice, reflecting the moral and religious climate of the American Midwest at the close of the nineteenth century.
Poems in Wartime: Part 4 From Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
This collection of verse chronicles the moral upheaval of the American Civil War, transforming the raw grief and political urgency of a fractured nation into a solemn, enduring prayer for justice.
Roughing It, Part 8
Mark Twain
This travelogue captures a restless spirit traversing the Pacific and the American West, blending awe-struck observation of volcanic landscapes with the sharp, often dangerous realities of frontier life. It is a portrait of a world—and a writer—in constant motion.
Starr, of the Desert
B. M. Bower
A quiet, unassuming man seeks a new life in the desert, only to find his path crossed by a secret agent guarding a nation against revolution.
Stories of the Foot-hills
Margaret Collier Graham
This collection of short stories captures the rugged, sun-baked transition of the American West, where human ambition often clashes with an unforgiving and arid landscape. It offers a clear-eyed look at the lives of settlers, laborers, and dreamers attempting to carve existence out of the California foothills at…
The banker and the bear
Henry Kitchell Webster
The high-stakes world of Chicago finance is rarely captured with such cold-eyed precision as in this drama of a bank under siege. A young banker faces a battle of wits against a ruthless market manipulator, testing the limits of loyalty, honesty, and nerve.
The Cloud
Sartell Prentice
A stirring call to arms for the American public during the final year of the First World War, this work frames the global conflict as a moral struggle for the survival of civilization itself.
The Dolliver Romance
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The search for an elixir of life leads a humble, aging apothecary into a dangerous, supernatural struggle between his own gentle desire for survival and a predatory rival’s gluttonous obsession with immortality.
The Fifth String
John Philip Sousa
A brilliant violinist stakes his soul on a cursed instrument to win the woman he loves, only to find that the price of god-like artistry is the very humanity he sought to express.
The Garotters
William Dean Howells
A simple mistake in a snowy Boston park spirals into a chaotic comedy of errors, exposing the fragile, performative nature of social propriety and domestic heroism.
The Iron Furrow
George C. (George Clifford) Shedd
A determined engineer fights to secure water rights in the harsh New Mexico desert, battling corrupt local power brokers and the elements to bring life to the parched mesa.
The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. LXXXIX, No. 1, 1923)
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic snapshot of early 1920s collegiate ambition, capturing both the earnest intellectualism of the American undergraduate and the restless, romantic spirit of the Jazz Age.
Virginia of Virginia: A Story
Amélie Rives
A young woman of wild, untamed spirit encounters a sophisticated Englishman in the Virginia countryside, leading to a tragic collision of cultures and unrequited longing. This story of passion and sacrifice captures the stark beauty of a rural world caught between its past and its changing future.
A Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses
Louise Imogen Guiney
A collection of verses that finds the eternal within the transient, transforming the weight of history and the weariness of the modern world into disciplined, lyrical song.
Big Brother
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A young boy’s selfless devotion to his orphaned toddler brother guides them through the trials of displacement until they find a new, permanent sanctuary. This narrative of quiet resilience explores the strength found in sibling bonds and the healing power of shared grief.
Captivating Mary Carstairs
Henry Sydnor Harrison
A New York man embarks on an absurd, covert mission to spirit away a child, only to discover the complexities of adult secrets and his own unexpected double.
Death Points a Finger
Will Levinrew
A veteran scientist and an ambitious reporter untangle a web of staged suicides and kidnappings among a group of wealthy, aging men linked by a massive financial fund.
Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A life bent out of shape by early heartbreak finds its final, uncanny purpose in the shadow of mortality.
Father Brighthopes
J. T. (John Townsend) Trowbridge
A gentle, wandering clergyman brings sunlight into a bustling farmhouse, teaching a young family that the true spirit of religion is found in kindness, contentment, and a deep appreciation for the natural world.
Lumber Lyrics
Walt Mason
A whimsical series of "prose rhymes" celebrates the unsung dignity of the retail lumber trade, insisting that the merchant who builds the world’s homes is a vital, spirited participant in human happiness.
Pick a Crime
Richard Rein Smith
The future is a sanitized, silent cage where the state does not punish crime—it simply renders it impossible. This chilling portrait of a technocratic dystopia exposes the ultimate cost of a perfectly ordered society.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 05, April 30, 1870
Various
A satirical snapshot of post-Civil War American life, this weekly periodical uses wit and parody to dissect the political, social, and cultural obsessions of 1870.
The Boy Grew Older
Heywood Broun
A sportswriter faces the sudden, solitary challenge of raising his infant son after his wife leaves, navigating the evolving demands of fatherhood and the boy’s emerging, artistic identity.
The girl in the crowd
Albert Payson Terhune
A young telephone operator finds her monotonous life transformed by a secret, romantic obsession with the voices of two apartment tenants, only to learn that reality is far less glamorous than the stories she imagines.
The Lady and Sada San: A Sequel to the Lady of the Decoration
Frances Little
The unexpected journey of a Kentucky woman to the Orient leads her into a dramatic web of cross-cultural romance and high-stakes family duty.
The ragged edge: A tale of ward life & politics
John T. (John Thomas) McIntyre
The rough-and-tumble world of ward politics reveals that power is a currency as volatile and corrupting as the cheap whiskey consumed in its back-alley saloons.
The Travellers: A Tale, Designed for Young People
Catharine Maria Sedgwick
A journey through the American and Canadian wilderness reveals that nature’s grandest spectacles are surpassed only by the quiet, persistent beauty of human virtue and kindness.
"What So Proudly We Hail..."
Day Keene
Ephraim Hale, a Congressman from 1789, awakens in 1950s Central Park, finding the future a confusing, tax-heavy labyrinth where his historical idealism clashes with the harsh realities of the modern American dream.
Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A wealthy uncle and his three spirited nieces arrive at a neglected, mysterious farm in the backwoods of Millville, where they soon find themselves embroiled in a local puzzle involving a hidden inheritance and a shady hardware merchant.
Betty Lee, Sophomore
Harriet Pyne Grove
In this vibrant slice of high school life, a grounded sophomore navigates the trials of teenage social hierarchies, track meets, and class loyalties with straightforward charm.