Free summaries
Historical Novels — page 6
387 public-domain historical novels books, summarised. Page 6 of 9.
A Prince of Good Fellows
Robert Barr
A king wanders his own realm disguised as a commoner, finding that the true character of Scotland is far wilder, sharper, and more loyal than his courtiers ever report.
Ponteach
Robert Rogers
The frontier is a place where betrayal leaves a permanent scar, and the clash of empires is felt most keenly in the quiet, desperate moments of a father’s grief.
A Struggle for Rome, v. 1
Felix Dahn
A master strategist manipulates the crumbling remnants of the Roman Empire, weaving a web of political intrigue that pits Gothic kings against the shadows of a lost, imperial past.
The Gathering of Brother Hilarius
Michael Fairless
The cloistered world of a young monk is shattered by the arrival of the Black Death, forcing him to confront a reality far harsher than his prayers ever suggested. This meditative tale follows the spiritual and physical journey of a man who must trade the safety of his monastery for the profound, often tragic,…
The Castle of Ehrenstein: Its Lords Spiritual and Temporal
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A haunting mystery of stolen inheritance and ghostly visitations, this tale follows a young man’s discovery of his noble birth against the backdrop of a divided Germany.
The Induna's Wife
Bertram Mitford
A seasoned warrior recounts his life within the shifting tides of power during the rise and fall of the Zulu and Ndebele nations. This narrative captures the perspective of a man caught between his duty to kings and the brutal unpredictability of survival.
Brendan's Fabulous Voyage: A Lecture delivered on January 19, 1893, before the Scottish Society of Literature and Art
Bute, John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, Marquess of
The life of a sixth-century Irish saint is transformed by legend into an oceanic odyssey, blending the spirit of a monk with the high adventure of a sailor.
David Fleming's Forgiveness
Margaret M. (Margaret Murray) Robertson
The rugged Canadian wilderness becomes a crucible for the human heart as two families, bound by history and grievance, seek a way toward reconciliation. Through patience and quiet labor, they find that the heaviest burdens are often those we choose to carry.
Lady Rosamond's Secret: A Romance of Fredericton
Rebecca Agatha Armour
This chronicle of 19th-century colonial life in New Brunswick weaves historical fact into a gentle, earnest narrative of duty, friendship, and the quiet persistence of the human heart.
The Capsina: An Historical Novel
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
The fight for Greek independence is a crucible of fire and sea-spray, where the fierce, untamable spirit of a woman becomes the rallying point for a nation struggling to cast off an ancient, heavy yoke.
Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great
Elizabeth Rundle Charles
In the waning light of the Roman Empire, a young Irish captive and a noble Roman family find their lives unexpectedly intertwined amidst the shadow of Attila the Hun. This historical narrative chronicles a search for faith, freedom, and human dignity during a period of profound civilizational collapse.
"The Ladies": A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty
L. Adams (Lily Adams) Beck
This collection of reimagined histories invites readers to step behind the velvet curtains of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to witness the private struggles and hidden hearts of history’s most famous women.
The Story of Alexander
Robert Steele
The legend of Alexander the Great finds new life here as a medieval chivalric romance, reimagining the conqueror not as a historical figure, but as an ideal knight of the middle ages.
A Captive of the Roman Eagles
Felix Dahn
A young Germanic woman, caught between the encroaching Roman Empire and her own people’s desperate survival, finds her fate irrevocably linked to a Roman poet and a wounded tribal warrior.
Dross
Henry Seton Merriman
A disaffected English gentleman finds himself entangled in the crumbling politics and hidden fortunes of the French Second Empire, where a stolen fortune dictates his fate.
The Legend of Ulenspiegel, Volume 1 (of 2): And Lamme Goedzak, and their Adventures Heroical, Joyous and Glorious in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere
Charles de Coster
A child of Flanders, born with a lucky star and a devil’s mark, wanders a war-torn landscape as a jester and a rebel to settle a cosmic debt.
The Days of Mohammed
Anna May Wilson
The quest for spiritual truth drives a seeker through the crucible of a changing world, where ancient traditions fade before the rising tide of a new faith.
The Last of the Vikings
John (Novelist) Bowling
Trapped between the iron fist of William the Conqueror and their own fractured loyalties, the last free Saxons and Northmen of England make a final, blood-drenched stand for survival.
Neæra: A Tale of Ancient Rome
Graham, John W. (John William), active 1886-1887
Two lovers, separated by the luxury and corruption of Tiberius’s imperial court, must brave greedy heirs, royal caprice, and dark underground prisons to reclaim a stolen heritage and find each other again.
The Young Captives: A Story of Judah and Babylon
Erasmus W. Jones
Two exiled Judean brothers, their sister, and their cousin Daniel navigate moral corruption, courtly intrigue, and spiritual trial in Babylon while preserving their sacred ancestral faith.
Akra the Slave
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
Freedom, captivity, and the transcendent nature of love converge in this poetic drama set against the ancient backdrop of Mesopotamia.
The Call of the East: A Romance of Far Formosa
Thurlow Fraser
Courage and romance intertwine as Western lives clash and unite during a forgotten nineteenth-century conflict on the shores of Formosa.
Andreas Hofer: An Historical Novel
L. (Luise) Mühlbach
A simple Tyrolese innkeeper leads his countrymen in a heroic, desperate uprising to restore their land to the Austrian crown.
Her Infinite Variety
Brand Whitlock
A young Illinois state senator impulsively champions woman suffrage to impress a brilliant female lawyer, only to ignite a war with his formidable future mother-in-law.
The First Christmas Tree: A Story of the Forest
Henry Van Dyke
A single act of courage in the dark heart of a pagan forest replaces a blood-soaked sacrifice with a living green tree of hope.
The Tale of Timber Town
Alfred A. (Alfred Augustus) Grace
The rugged landscape of a frontier gold-mining town serves as the backdrop for a sprawling narrative of fortune, deception, and the complex entanglements of the human heart. It is a story where the allure of sudden wealth tests the moral boundaries of every inhabitant.
Chantemerle
D. K. (Dorothy Kathleen) Broster
The shadow of the French Revolution looms over a crumbling estate, where two cousins find their fates intertwined by honor, civil war, and a secret love for the same woman.
The Pilgrim's Shell
Eugène Sue
A legacy of feudal tyranny drives a desperate quarryman to the Crusades, sparking a generational struggle that pits the raw labor of the common people against the entrenched cruelty of the medieval nobility.
The Pioneers
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Two families forge lives in the rugged Australian bush, bound by shared secrets, the heavy weight of the past, and the slow, inexorable pull of a new, untamed land.
The Saint's Tragedy
Charles Kingsley
The tragedy of a saint is often found not in the martyrdom she endures, but in the human cost of the perfection she pursues.
Cleopatra
Claude Ferval
This account of the last Queen of Egypt explores the intersection of myth and history, tracing the life of a woman whose magnetic intellect and fierce ambition reshaped the Roman world.
Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family
Elizabeth Rundle Charles
This narrative captures the intimate, domestic life of a German family caught in the sweeping tide of the Reformation, as they witness Martin Luther’s transformation from a struggling monk into a revolutionary historical force.
Saragossa: A Story of Spanish Valor
Benito Pérez Galdós
The indomitable city of Saragossa stands as a crumbling monument to human endurance, where ordinary citizens transform into legendary defenders against an encroaching empire.
The Casque's Lark
Eugène Sue
The story of a legendary Gallic leader and the betrayal that undoes her family, this historical chronicle explores the high cost of power and the resilience of the common person.
The Yoke: A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt
Elizabeth Miller
A young Egyptian sculptor finds his loyalties fractured when he falls in love with a Hebrew woman amidst the rising tensions of the Biblical Exodus.
Belshazzar: A Tale of the Fall of Babylon
William Stearns Davis
This historical novel reconstructs the final, decadent days of the Babylonian Empire, charting the clash between an arrogant, pleasure-seeking king and the rising power of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great. It is a tale of ancient geopolitical intrigue, courtly romance, and the inexorable moral decline of a…
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 22
Unknown
HOOK Lives intersect across the Scottish Borders in this collection of moralizing tales, where quiet domesticity, sudden ruin, and the weight of ancestral secrets shape the destinies of flawed, searching people.
As Others Saw Him: A Retrospect, A.D. 54
Joseph Jacobs
A contemporary of the historical Jesus recounts the Nazarene’s life from the perspective of an observant Jewish scholar in Jerusalem, seeking to understand the man behind the myth.
The Forest of Vazon: A Guernsey Legend of the Eighth Century
Anonymous
A sudden, cataclysmic tidal wave reshapes a Guernsey coastline in 709, burying a forest and a civilization under the sea to resolve a desperate conflict between pagan tradition and the rising tide of Christianity.
A Sheaf of Bluebells
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
In the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars, a young noblewoman’s loyalty is torn between a rigid, conspiratorial family and the man she is forbidden to love.
Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters: A Novel
May Agnes Fleming
A tale of three sisters navigating passion, secrets, and the heavy weight of social expectations in a 19th-century Canadian household. It is a story where impulsive choices lead to lasting, often painful, consequences.
The Hunted Outlaw, or, Donald Morrison, the Canadian Rob Roy
Anonymous
The law is a slow, heavy machine, and when it finally catches up to the man who defies it, the result is never as clean or as heroic as the legend suggests.
Shibusawa
I. William Adams
A young man navigates the seismic shifts of late-feudal Japan, reconciling his personal quest for love with the larger, violent destiny of a nation at a crossroads. This tale captures a pivotal moment of cultural and political transformation.
The Red Cross Barge
Marie Belloc Lowndes
This story of a German surgeon trapped in a French town during the opening weeks of the Great War explores the fragile, often impossible, intersection of professional duty and national loyalty. It is a quiet, somber meditation on the dehumanizing nature of conflict.
Rowena & Harold: A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst
William Stephen Pryer
Feud and faith collide along the Sussex cliffs when an obdurate Norman lord drives his daughter’s Saxon lover to the Crusades.
Almoran and Hamet: An Oriental Tale
John Hawkesworth
When a tyrant bends reality to steal his brother’s bride, magic grants every desire only to make his punishment absolute.
Menotah: A Tale of the Riel Rebellion
John Trevena
A young Indian woman’s unreserved love for a treacherous white covert agent collides with the bloodshed of the 1885 Riel Rebellion.
The Firebrand
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
A fiery Scots swordsman and his unlikely companions plunge into the backstabbing mayhem of the Carlist War, discovering that keeping their heads requires far more than a sharp blade.