Free summaries
Historical Novels — page 9
697 public-domain historical novels books, summarised. Page 9 of 15.
Adonijah: A Tale of the Jewish Dispersion
Jane Margaret Strickland
A tale of shifting loyalties and spiritual awakening, this historical narrative follows a captive Hebrew and a Roman noblewoman as they navigate the brutal intersection of Nero’s decadent empire and the rise of the early Church.
Hanit the Enchantress
Garrett Chatfield Pier
This story bridges the gap between modern archaeological ambition and the ancient, brooding echoes of the Nile, where a fevered dream of past lives blurs into the present reality of an excavation. It is a haunting exploration of how the past refuses to stay buried when summoned by obsession.
John Brown: Confessions of a New Army Cadet
R. W. Campbell
The transformation of a civilian student into a commissioned officer, this account captures the collision between traditional military rigor and the spirited, questioning minds of the New Army during the Great War.
The Pastor's Fire-side Vol. 4 (of 4)
Jane Porter
A fallen statesman’s son struggles to reclaim his family’s honor while navigating the shifting loyalties of European courts and the heavy burden of a father’s tragic, renegade life.
The Count of Nideck: adapted from the French of Erckmann-Chartrian
Erckmann-Chatrian
A physician arrives at a remote, snow-bound castle only to find his patient—the formidable Count of Nideck—plagued by a haunting, bestial madness that defies medical explanation. This dark, gothic mystery pulls the reader into the heart of the Black Forest, where ancient bloodlines and spectral legends converge.
The Missionary: An Indian Tale
Morgan, Sydney, Lady
A story of clashing faiths and irrepressible human longing, this narrative follows a Portuguese missionary and an Indian priestess whose forbidden connection threatens to dismantle both their worlds. It is a work that captures the precarious threshold between absolute conviction and the vulnerabilities of the heart.
A book of dear dead women
Edna Worthley Underwood
This collection of stories explores the collision between human obsession and the cold, unyielding nature of the past, weaving together tales of art, historical tragedy, and the supernatural.
The Master of Stair
Marjorie Bowen
A haunting tale of political obsession and personal ruin, this narrative follows the cold, calculated maneuvers that lead to the infamous massacre of the Macdonald clan in the Scottish Highlands.
King-Errant
Flora Annie Webster Steel
A restless king of the East seeks his destiny through poetry, battle, and love, leaving behind a legacy of both empire and humanity.
The Great White Army
Max Pemberton
The tragic, freezing disintegration of a once-proud army unfolds through the eyes of a veteran surgeon, charting a desperate path from the heights of a captured Moscow to the bitter survival of the retreat.
Wurra-Wurra
Curtis Dunham
A devoted champion of Saint Patrick embarks on a perilous quest to shatter a mysterious pagan idol, only to discover that the god of the West offers a strangely comforting peace.
Yorkshire Family Romance
Frederick Ross
A collection of historical vignettes that breathes life into the wild, blood-soaked, and legendary past of Yorkshire’s noble houses and rural landscapes.
The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico
Egerton Castle
A soldier finds his lonely life upended when a mysterious princess enters his home, sparking a dangerous, long-running game of mistaken identity and romantic pursuit that stretches across the map of Europe.
The Red Cross Girls in Belgium
Margaret Vandercook
The four American Red Cross girls, having already served in the British trenches and the French countryside, find themselves in occupied Belgium, where the realities of war and the personal burdens of the heart collide. Faced with hunger, illness, and the shadow of the German authorities, they must navigate the…
Frey and His Wife
Maurice Hewlett
This brisk, ironic tale follows an unlikely pair of men—one a cowardly trickster and the other an honorable fugitive—as their paths cross, diverge, and finally collide in the shadow of a wooden god. It is a sharp study in the difference between the appearance of courage and the substance of it.
The Abbatial Crosier
Eugène Sue
In the shadow of a medieval abbey, a captured warrior and a captive goldsmith join forces to orchestrate a desperate escape from a ruthless, power-hungry abbess.
Psyche
Walter S. (Walter Samuel) Cramp
A innocent young family of Greek performers is drawn into the deadly, paranoid inner circles of Imperial Rome. Power, corruption, and fragile virtue collide as the court of Tiberius unravels.
The Bandolero
Mayne Reid
A soldier in a foreign land finds his heart captured by a mystery, only to discover that love and war in the mountains are as dangerous as they are intoxicating.
The Glorious Return: A Story of the Vaudois in 1689
Crona Temple
The "Glorious Return" of 1689 marks the definitive moment when a persecuted people reclaimed their ancestral Alpine homes through faith and sheer tenacity. This historical narrative documents how a small, beleaguered band of Vaudois exiles defied the geopolitical machinations of kings to secure their religious freedom.
The Silver Maple
Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
The path to one's true identity is often obscured by the tangled roots of family pride and long-held grudges. In the rugged landscapes of Canada, a young man must navigate a legacy of conflict to claim his future.
The Making of William Edwards
Banks, G. Linnaeus (George Linnaeus), Mrs.
When a grieving widow faces a steep Welsh mountain with five children and a farm to work, her young son’s silent fixation on stones and structure slowly lays the groundwork for a legendary architectural triumph.
Attila: A Romance. Vol. I
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
In fifth-century Europe, the shadow of a rising conqueror falls across both the declining Roman Empire and the wild lands beyond its borders, where love and duty collide under the threat of ruin.
Manners: A Novel, Vol 3
Madame Panache
A grand estate in western Ireland becomes the staging ground where hidden lineages, past betrayals, and romantic entanglements converge to reshape a young woman's destiny.
The Long Journey
Elsie Singmaster
A family’s desperate migration from a war-torn German village to the colonial American wilderness tests the endurance of the human spirit and the strength of ancestral bonds.
A Conspiracy of the Carbonari
L. (Luise) Mühlbach
The shadow of a conqueror looms over a fractured Europe, where a secret society of conspirators gathers in the dark to dismantle an empire. This tale of hidden identities and desperate loyalties explores the high cost of defiance against a seemingly invincible force.
Kasba (White Partridge): A Story of Hudson Bay
George R. Ray
A courageous Hudson’s Bay Company officer establishes a remote outpost in the harsh North, only to face a treacherous betrayal that tests his resolve and the loyalty of those around him.
Little comrade: a tale of the great war
Burton Egbert Stevenson
This is a brisk, high-stakes adventure set at the sudden onset of the First World War, where a chance encounter leads an American traveler into a dangerous game of espionage and survival across the German-French frontier.
The Duke of Brittany
Henriette Jeanrenaud
The life of Arthur of Brittany, the rightful heir to the English throne, is a brief, tragic flicker of honor extinguished by the cold ambition of his uncle, King John. This account follows the young duke’s desperate struggle to claim his birthright and the enduring loyalty of those who fought to save him.
An I.D.B. in South Africa
Louise Vescelius Sheldon
This drama of secrets, illicit diamonds, and tangled identities captures the high-stakes atmosphere of the 19th-century Kimberley diamond fields. It is a story of moral ambiguity, where personal reputation and sudden wealth collide under the harsh South African sun.
The Old House: A Novel
Cécile Tormay
The old house stands as a silent, living character, holding the secrets and fading fortunes of a family caught in the tides of history. It is a haunting portrait of legacy, where the weight of the past dictates the fragile, unspoken lives of those who dwell within.
Imperial Purple
Edgar Saltus
A parade of imperial madness, where absolute power transforms mortal men into gold-dusted gods and exquisite monsters.
Orrain: A Romance
S. (Sidney) Levett Yeats
A disgraced French nobleman fights his way through royal intrigue, religious persecution, and a treacherous brother to save the woman he loves.
The Cities of the Sun: Stories of Ancient America founded on historical incidents in the Book of Mormon
Elizabeth Cannon Porter
Ancient ruins and forgotten civilizations serve as the backdrop for these reimagined tales of early American history, where moral struggle, political intrigue, and personal sacrifice collide. Through a series of vignettes, the narrative explores the rise and fall of leaders and the endurance of faith.
A Gallant of Lorraine
H. Noel (Hugh Noel) Williams
A man of immense charm and varying fortune, this seventeenth-century courtier navigates the dangerous currents of French royal politics with the poise of a soldier and the wit of a diplomat.
Discovering "Evelina": An Old-fashioned Romance: A Companion Book to "The Jessamy Bride"
Frank Frankfort Moore
A young woman’s secret scribbling transforms her from a timid, overlooked daughter into the most celebrated literary voice of her day, forcing her to choose between the world she created and the man she loves.
Albrecht
Arlo Bates
A mysterious knight emerges from the Black Forest to claim the hand of a noblewoman, masking a secret origin that challenges the very nature of his humanity and his marriage.
A Viking's love: and other tales of the North
Ottilie A. (Ottilia Adelina) Liljencrantz
Ancient Northern legends and heroic sagas come to life in these vivid retellings, where duty, pride, and romantic devotion collide. This collection captures the stark, elemental spirit of Norse mythology and the Middle Ages through tales of honor and sacrifice.
The End: How the Great War Was Stopped. A Novelistic Vagary
L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap
The Great War, a catastrophe of unprecedented scale, finds its improbable conclusion not through diplomacy or battlefield victory, but through a supernatural intervention of the dead. This account traces the spiritual odyssey of a small French village and the ethereal sacrifice that compels humanity to lay down its…
The Foundling of the Wreck
Anonymous
A castaway boy risks everything to free his foster father from the brutal labor camps of Peter the Great, only to discover his own noble heritage in the process.
The King's Warrant: A Story of Old and New France
Alfred H. Engelbach
Separated by oceans and dynastic schemes, two young lovers find their union thwarted by a forged royal mandate and the bitter end of a empire.
The rebellion of the Princess
Mary Imlay Taylor
A French gentleman is drawn into a dangerous web of Russian court intrigue, where he must rescue a spirited princess from political upheaval and win her heart against the backdrop of a brewing revolution.
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.
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 Castle of Twilight
Margaret Horton Potter
A quiet, atmospheric exploration of isolation and longing, this story follows the lives of women confined to a medieval Breton castle while the world beyond remains a distant, often dangerous backdrop. It portrays the heavy weight of duty and the ache of personal desire in an era defined by rigid social structures.
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 421: Volume 17, New Series, January 24, 1852
Various
This January 1852 edition of a long-running Victorian periodical serves as a cultural time capsule, blending earnest moral instruction, practical colonial advice, and dramatic storytelling into a single, cohesive snapshot of mid-19th-century intellectual life.
The World Before Them: A Novel. Volume 1 (of 3)
Susanna Moodie
A young woman of unknown parentage refuses to marry her farmer sweetheart against his father's wishes, setting off a quiet struggle between duty, pride, and self-improvement.
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.
The Dead Boxer: The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two
William Carleton
A young man is driven to the brink of ruin by a public humiliation, only to find his path to redemption blocked by a web of ancient family grudges and a mysterious, vengeful crone.