Free summaries
Historical Novels — page 8
387 public-domain historical novels books, summarised. Page 8 of 9.
Captain Mansana & Mother's Hands
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
A fiery Italian soldier finds his pride dismantled by a woman’s grace, while a daughter learns that true nobility is written in the calloused skin of a parent’s hands.
Cities of the Dawn: Naples - Athens - Pompeii - Constantinople - Smyrna - Jaffa - Jerusalem - Alexandria - Cairo - Marseilles - Avignon - Lyons - Dijon
J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
The world is wide, and its ancient cities hold the echoes of empires long faded. This travelogue serves as a guide through the sun-drenched ruins and bustling streets of a Mediterranean world in transition.
Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher
W. H. (William Henry) Withrow
The borders of a young nation fray under the pressures of imperial conflict, testing the resolve of those caught between ancestral loyalties and the immediate demands of faith and home.
One in a Thousand
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A nobleman of simple heart and an ambitious count collide amidst the shifting loyalties and religious warfare of sixteenth-century France. This sweeping historical romance traces the struggle for a young woman’s hand against the backdrop of the rise of Henry IV.
Bertrand of Brittany
Warwick Deeping
A disfigured, underestimated youth rises from obscurity to become a paragon of chivalry, risking his reputation and his very soul to protect the honor of those who once spurned him.
Dust: A Novel
Julian Hawthorne
This narrative explores the intersection of ambition and identity in a bustling, post-Napoleonic London, where the sudden rise and fall of fortunes hinge on the shifting sands of social reputation and private morality.
In exitu Israel
S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
The gathering storm of the French Revolution forces a young woman to trade the quiet of her Normandy home for the lethal chaos of Paris, seeking justice for a victim of the state.
ODTAA: A novel
John Masefield
The world is a web of absurd, perilous, and often fatal coincidences. To survive its indifference, one must decide whether to be the victim of one’s circumstances or the architect of one’s own desperate hope.
Pretty Michal
Mór Jókai
Pretty Michal is a sweeping, gothic-inflected historical romance set in 17th-century Hungary, where the lives of a sheltered minister’s daughter and a spirited young man are violently upended by social rigidities and the grim shadow of the executioner’s trade.
The Sun King
Gaston Derreaux
The birth of a miraculous child triggers a divine rebellion against a tyrannical regime, leading to the collapse of a city built upon skulls and the birth of a new faith.
Vittoria
George Meredith
The struggle for Italian independence provides the backdrop for this intense, sprawling drama of personal and political loyalty. In a world where every public action risks a private tragedy, the characters must navigate the friction between their revolutionary ideals and the inescapable demands of the human heart.
Attila: A Romance. Vol. II
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A relentless conqueror’s destiny is inextricably bound to a young Roman whose life he must protect to ensure his own survival. Amidst the fall of empires, love struggles to endure against the tides of war.
Highland Legends
Lauder, Thomas Dick, Sir
HOOK Through the mist of the Scottish Highlands, these tales weave together the brutal realities of clan feuds, the weight of ancient superstitions, and the enduring power of historical memory.
Francezka
Molly Elliot Seawell
Amid the grand theater of eighteenth-century war and court intrigue, a fiery young actress and a noble soldier discover that true love's deadliest enemy is not distance or war, but deception.
My Lady Rotha: A Romance
Stanley John Weyman
In the shadow of the Thirty Years' War, a young Protestant noblewoman leaves her ancestral home, plunging directly into the chaos, lawlessness, and competing allegiances of a continent torn apart by religious conflict.
The Duke's Prize
Maturin M. (Maturin Murray) Ballou
A destitute young artist must rely on raw talent and a hidden masterwork to win a grand prize, claim the woman he loves, and outmaneuver the lethal schemes of envious Florentine rivals.
Edward Barnett, a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams
Tobias Aconite
A ruined daughter, a displaced heir, and an unyielding lord collide in a sweep of vengeance across the Atlantic.
Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising
Annie Nathan Meyer
A devoted fourteenth-century reformer finds his spirit torn between the quiet purity of the sanctuary, the fiery demands of a peasant uprising, and the agonizing call of human desire.
Our Own Set: A Novel
Ossip Schubin
Rome in 1870 is a glittering arena where highborn vanity and high-society arrogance quietly trample the innocent.
Lady Inger of Ostrat: Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III
Henrik Ibsen
No knight rides through the halls of Ostrat Manor without paying a toll in blood, deceit, and broken vows.
For Sceptre and Crown: A Romance of the Present Time. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Gregor Samarow
The chess match of nineteenth-century European power politics unfolds, where the shifting loyalties of monarchs and the calculated maneuvers of statesmen drive a continent toward the inevitable clash of the Austro-Prussian War.
The Year Nine: A Tale of the Tyrol
Anne Manning
A simple innkeeper becomes the unlikely heart of a mountain people’s desperate, tragic rebellion against Napoleonic rule. This stirring chronicle follows the 1809 Tyrolese uprising through the eyes of those who lived it.
At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium
William Le Queux
The fires of 1914 transform a quiet romance in the Ardennes into a desperate struggle for survival, as a young lawyer and his beloved navigate the opening horrors of the Great War in Belgium.
In Love With the Czarina, and Other Stories
Mór Jókai
Great historical figures often find their true ends not in triumph, but in the crushing weight of their own legends. These tales explore how the masks of power and the ghosts of the past inevitably dismantle those who wear them.
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 979, October 1, 1898
Various
The late Victorian era comes to life in this expansive miscellany, which balances the tension of impending international conflict with the domestic preoccupations and moral guidance expected of a young lady in 1898.
The Wooing of Wistaria
Onoto Watanna
A romance of imperial ambition and divided loyalties unfolds against the backdrop of Japan’s final, tumultuous transition from the feudal shogunate to a new era.
Under the Big Dipper
Desiderius George Dery
A young American adventurer finds his purpose when he risks everything to rescue a distressed noblewoman from political turmoil. Their journey from the shadows of European intrigue to the promise of a new life in America unfolds under a watchful, celestial eye.
A Romance of Toronto (Founded on Fact): A Novel
Annie G. (Annie Gregg) Savigny
This story of late-Victorian social circles and hidden fortunes explores the tension between duty and personal freedom in a rapidly modernizing Canadian city. It offers a window into the domestic anxieties, romantic entanglements, and moral posturing of an era where reputation was a fragile, guarded currency.
Folk-Tales of Napoleon: Napoleonder from the Russian
Honoré de Balzac
This collection presents two distinct, folkloric visions of Napoleon Bonaparte: one a terrifying Russian myth of a sand-born conqueror, the other a nostalgic French legend of a divinely gifted soldier-emperor.
Yodogima: In Feudalistic Japan
I. William Adams
The shifting allegiances of feudal Japan provide a tumultuous backdrop for a woman’s struggle to claim her own autonomy. Amidst the rise of legendary shoguns, a daughter of the Taira line navigates a world of absolute power and rigid tradition.
Rainbow's End
Rex Beach
A young adventurer finds his way to a war-torn island to seek his fortune, only to discover that the truest riches are not buried in the earth, but found in the company of those he protects.
Tales of Destiny
Edmund Mitchell
HOOK In the shadows of a 16th-century caravanserai, travelers from across India gather to share chilling, interconnected accounts of fate, hidden identities, and the moral complexities of the human heart.
The Countess Cosel: A Romance of History of the Times of Augustus the Strong
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
A woman of fierce pride finds her life consumed by a reckless king, discovering too late that absolute power demands total surrender.
The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life
Eötvös, József, báró
A profound, sweeping portrait of 19th-century Hungary, this narrative weaves together the fates of a principled village notary, a desperate outlaw, and a corrupt landed gentry. It offers a bracing, unvarnished look at a society on the precipice of seismic change.
The Well in the Desert: An Old Legend of the House of Arundel
Emily Sarah Holt
The quest for identity and spiritual belonging unfolds against the backdrop of a fractured, medieval England. It is a contemplative study of human cruelty, the search for grace, and the enduring power of faith.
Roads from Rome
Anne C. E. (Anne Crosby Emery) Allinson
HOOK These vignettes bridge the gap between ancient history and modern experience, portraying Roman figures not as statues, but as people grappling with the same joys, losses, and dilemmas that define us today.
The Making of a Saint
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
A young man is pulled into the dangerous, shifting loyalties of a Renaissance Italian city, where political ambition and personal obsession collide with fatal results.
The open sea
Edgar Lee Masters
The restless tide of human history rises and falls through these verses, where the ghosts of ancients and the architects of American power collide in a stark, searching inquiry into freedom and fate.
The red cockade
Stanley John Weyman
The revolution is not a stage play, but a wildfire that consumes the actors alongside the scenery. This account tracks the cost of loyalty when the world decides to burn its foundations.
Calvert of Strathore
Abbe Carter Goodloe
A young American secretary finds himself entangled in the lethal intrigue of the French Revolution while serving under Thomas Jefferson in Paris.
Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe
William Le Queux
The setting is the glittering, high-stakes world of early 20th-century European diplomacy, where a British diplomat and a mysterious princess navigate a dangerous web of international espionage and forbidden passion.
The Man in Black: An Historical Novel of the Days of Queen Anne
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
In a rigid, crumbling world of honor and betrayal, one man’s quiet integrity sparks a ruinous conspiracy that threatens to consume everyone he holds dear.
In the Roaring Fifties
Edward Dyson
The Australian gold rush transforms a reticent newcomer into a man of the earth, bridging the distance between his English roots and the wild, untamed promise of the colonial frontier.
Lily Pearl and The Mistress of Rosedale
Ida Glenwood
This sweeping Victorian domestic drama follows the long-lost daughter of a wealthy family as she navigates a web of secrets, mistaken identities, and the lingering scars of the American Civil War.
The Gorgeous Isle: A Romance
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
The Caribbean sun and the shadow of a fallen poet’s past collide on the island of Nevis, where a young woman’s romantic devotion meets the reality of a destructive, addictive genius.
A Noble Queen: A Romance of Indian History (Volume 3 of 3)
Meadows Taylor
A noble queen defends her realm against imperial armies and treacherous courtiers, finding that the fiercest battles are fought within her own palace walls.
Red Fleece
Will Levington Comfort
A war correspondent and a mysterious woman navigate the shifting front lines of the First World War, where the brutal machinery of conflict collides with the fragile, transcendent power of human connection.
The Story of the Little Mamsell
Charlotte Niese
A Danish servant's tale of the French Revolution, love, and sacrifice.