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American Literature — page 89
4,619 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 89 of 97.
Scrambled World
Basil Wells
A scientist leaps three million years into the future, only to find humanity recreating the turbulent history of the twentieth century as a spectator sport.
Sketches of Southern life
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
A long-suffering mother finds her voice to chronicle the collapse of slavery and the hard-won dignity of freedom, singing of justice, temperance, and the survival of the human spirit.
Songs of Labor and Reform: Part 5 From Volume III of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
This collection of verse serves as a moral ledger of the nineteenth century, chronicling the urgent intersections of manual labor, political upheaval, and human rights. It provides a window into a time when the rhythmic beat of a shoemaker’s hammer or the quiet industry of a husking bee was viewed as an essential…
Stopping the leak
Madeline Leslie
The "leak" of the title is a metaphor for the slow, silent erosion of a family’s fortune, stability, and moral character caused by unchecked extravagance, indolence, and the vice of intemperance.
Sunshine Jane
Anne Warner
A young woman arrives to care for an ailing aunt, only to discover that healing is a matter of changing one’s perspective rather than merely following doctor’s orders.
The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 10, October 1895.: French Farmhouses
Various
This October 1895 installment of a professional architectural periodical argues that the rustic, picturesque charm of French farmhouses offers a vital, adaptable aesthetic for the evolving American country home.
The Complete Works of Artemus Ward
Artemus Ward
A master of the deadpan, a traveling showman recounts his journey through the American West with a suitcase full of bad paintings and an endless supply of dry, disjointed observations.
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 Purple Parasol
George Barr McCutcheon
A young lawyer stalks a beautiful woman through the Adirondacks, convinced she is the unfaithful wife he has been hired to expose. He soon learns that a case of mistaken identity can be as dangerous as it is romantic.
The Worst Joke in the World
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
The struggle to maintain one’s dignity while losing everything is a quiet, devastating labor. This story follows one woman’s journey from independent widow to the precarious, often misunderstood position of a mother-in-law living under her son’s roof.
A Modern Chronicle
Winston Churchill
Honora Spence is a woman of immense charm and restless ambition, whose search for a meaningful life leads her to reject a hollow marriage and pursue a grand, transformative passion. This story explores the steep price of personal liberation at the turn of the twentieth century.
From Plotzk to Boston
Mary Antin
HOOK A young girl captures the harrowing, awe-inspiring odyssey of her family’s immigration from a Polish shtetl to the promise of Boston.
Little Daffydowndilly: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A sensitive boy flees his stern schoolmaster, only to discover that labor, discipline, and effort govern every corner of human life.
Metzerott, Shoemaker
Katharine Pearson Woods
In a bustling German-American city where poverty brushes against wealth, a principled shoemaker and a visionary clergyman seek a new social order through love, labor, and cooperative sacrifice.
On Christmas Day in the Morning
Grace S. (Grace Smith) Richmond
The loneliness of elderly parents left behind during the holidays sparks a secret, midnight mission to restore the warmth of a full house. This quiet, sentimental story captures the restorative power of keeping family traditions alive.
Phebe, Her Profession: A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book
Anna Chapin Ray
The challenges of young adulthood and the pull of family ties define this warm, observant narrative. It explores how independence and duty shape the lives of a spirited, interconnected group of relatives.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 04, April 23, 1870
Various
This periodical offers a sharp, satirical snapshot of American life in 1870, blending biting commentary on politics, theater, and social trends with the earnest commercial advertisements of its era.
Stories by American Authors, Volume 6
Various
A young man returns from state prison to his coastal town, determined to repay his debt, set his life right, and overcome the quiet suspicion of his neighbors.
The high school rivals
Frank V. Webster
The high school years are a battleground of loyalties, where rivalries test character and friendship proves its worth against a backdrop of campus traditions and athletic glory.
The House of Toys
Henry Russell Miller
The pursuit of an ideal life often functions as a fragile construction, masking the deeper, more complex realities of love and personal duty.
The Lights and Shadows of Real Life
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
To navigate the world is to face both light and shadow, but our own moral choices determine whether we live in the sun or under self-made clouds of despair.
The phantom of Bogue Holauba: 1911
Charles Egbert Craddock
A city broker travels to a remote Mississippi plantation to settle a cousin's minor estate, only to be drawn into a haunting family legacy.
Tied Up for Tombstone
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Returning to the dusty Montana town of Piperock, a weary prospector finds his former partner editing a backward-printed newspaper while dodging bullets from local malcontents.
Town and Country
John S. (John Stowell) Adams
HOOK A tapestry of nineteenth-century moral instruction, this collection weaves together sentimental poetry and cautionary tales to remind the reader that kindness, faith, and sobriety are the only true paths to a meaningful life.
White Ashes
Sidney R. (Sidney Robinson) Kennedy
The catastrophe of a massive urban conflagration serves as the crucible for this story, testing both the financial integrity of insurance companies and the emotional resilience of those caught in the fallout.
Aikenside
Mary Jane Holmes
A young woman’s journey from a life of modest poverty to the grand halls of an estate reveals the enduring power of devotion and the resilience of the human heart in the face of tragedy.
At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance
Mabel Osgood Wright
When financial ruin shatters a wealthy New York family's elite life, they retreat to a remote hill country homestead where hard work, nature, and unexpected romance reshape their world.
Dorian
Nephi Anderson
A young Utah farmer navigates the quiet rhythms of rural life, intellectual awakenings, and the quiet emotional trials of love, faith, and responsibility.
Eneas Africanus
Harry Stillwell Edwards
A man disappears into the chaos of the Civil War with a trunk of family silver, only to spend years wandering the South, convinced he is still running an errand for his master.
For Gold or Soul? The Story of a Great Department Store
Lurana Sheldon
Behind the gleaming facade of a massive city department store, youthful ideals clash with the crushing realities of industrial labor and human frailty.
Gene Stratton Porter, Best-Seller
Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County
A prolific Indiana writer transformed her deep, lifelong obsession with the natural world into a series of bestselling novels that captivated fifty million readers across the globe.
George Helm
David Graham Phillips
An unpolished country lawyer enters the ruthless arena of state politics, challenging entrenched party bosses and winning the heart of a senator's independent daughter.
Josiah's Alarm, and Abel Perry's Funeral
Marietta Holley
A frantic winter of heating alarms and a lavish, ruinous funeral reveal the absurdities of human anxiety and social pretension.
Letters of Major Jack Downing, of the Downingville Militia
Seba Smith
An aging rustic militia major arrives in Civil War Washington to straighten out a beleaguered president through homespun tales, heavy drafts of Old Rye, and stubborn Democratic common sense.
Mona
Sheldon, Georgie, Mrs.
A chance meeting in Chicago and a diamond merchant's search set off a labyrinth of hidden identities, secret captivities, and long-buried hatreds.
Mr. Carteret and Others
David Gray
Across English country estates and foreign temples, clever expatriates navigate the absurdities of social custom, fox-hunting mishaps, and delayed romances.
The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler
Francis Worcester Doughty
When a frustrated Custom House collector brings in the Secret Service, two seasoned detectives match wits with a cunning international smuggling ring.
The Christmas Holly
Marion Harland
A singular, frost-bitten walk on a lonely Christmas Eve transforms into a journey of the heart, reminding a weary soul that the capacity for wonder is not a burden to be outgrown, but a grace to be nurtured.
The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey
Donald Ferguson
A spirited cold-weather tale of high school athletics, reformed delinquents, and long-lost family ties.
The Crisis
Winston Churchill
On the eve of the American Civil War, a proud Southern girl clashes fiercely with an unyielding Yankee newcomer against the backdrop of a changing St. Louis.
The Dwelling Place of Light
Winston Churchill
A young woman drawn into a bitter textile strike faces profound personal upheaval as her world fractures between industrial turmoil and traditional expectations.
The Forfeit
Ridgwell Cullum
On the vast, lawless Canadian prairie, a hardened rancher navigates a web of rustlers, bitter betrayal, and old shames to find an unexpected redemption.
The Phantom Herd
B. M. Bower
In the waning days of the open range, a visionary film director and a band of displaced cowboys set out to preserve a dying way of life on celluloid.
The Queen of the Swamp, and other plain Americans
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
A secluded Ohio valley holds secret heartbreaks and quiet lives, where plain neighbors love deeply, struggle with pride, and find unexpected grace in the shadow of the tall trees.
Timid Hare: The Little Captive
Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade
A stolen childhood on the prairie finds unexpected belonging, until a hidden talisman restores a lost family from across a bitter divide.
Undertones
Madison Julius Cawein
Walking through shadow-haunted woods where ancient myths linger, a solitary speaker traces the delicate, melancholic border between fading nature and human memory.
A Kentucky Cardinal: A Story
James Lane Allen
A solitary man finds his carefully cultivated life of nature-loving isolation upended by the arrival of an intriguing new neighbor, forcing a reckoning between his devotion to the wild and his longing for human connection.
Autres Temps...: 1916
Edith Wharton
A woman who has lived in quiet, long-term exile due to a past divorce returns to New York to find that while her daughter has navigated the city’s changing social codes successfully, the personal cost of her own reputation remains a heavy, inescapable weight.