Free summaries
Novels — page 11
2,574 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 11 of 54.
A Maid of the Silver Sea
John Oxenham
A young woman’s fierce love for her island home collides with the arrival of modern industry and a mysterious death, forcing her to protect a man she once regarded as an outsider.
The Gilded Chair: A Novel
Melville Davisson Post
A traveler finds himself caught in a web of obsession and destiny, where the boundaries between ancient myth and modern life dissolve into a desperate pursuit of an impossible love.
The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter
Robert W. (Robert William) Service
The life of a writer is a messy collision between the cold arithmetic of survival and the overheated world of the imagination. This story follows an American author who plunges into the bohemian life of Paris, only to find that his creative obsessions and his domestic reality are increasingly difficult to reconcile.
The vow
Paul Trent
A hardened millionaire finds his soul at stake when he vows to expose the atrocities of the Congo, forcing him to choose between the love of his wife and the demands of his conscience.
Farewell Love! A Novel
Matilde Serao
A woman’s desperate, all-consuming devotion to her husband becomes a fatal obsession in this harrowing portrait of emotional neglect and societal artifice.
Little Sister Snow
Frances Little
A young woman stands at the threshold of a traditional life while harboring a secret, modern longing for a foreign visitor who has moved on. This poignant story of duty, transition, and unrequited love captures the quiet ache of a changing Japan.
Lola
Owen Davis
A young woman’s life is restored through a medical miracle, only for her to shed her morality and pursue a path of cold, calculated hedonism. She remains an enigma, haunting those who love her even as she abandons them for the thrill of the chase.
A Chair on the Boulevard
Leonard Merrick
This collection of tales offers a window into the precarious, luminous lives of Montmartre’s struggling artists, where the boundary between a grand romantic gesture and a practical joke is perpetually blurred.
Beyond the Vanishing Point
Ray Cummings
This science fiction adventure follows a rescue mission into an impossible, subatomic universe. It explores the terror of cosmic scale and the fragility of human power when faced with the infinitely large and small.
The Ethical Engineer
Harry Harrison
The universe does not care about your moral grandstanding, but it will punish your ignorance of physics with cold, calculated indifference. To survive a savage world, one must trade the comforting rigidity of dogma for the fluid, ruthless pragmatism of an engineer.
The Royal End: A Romance
Henry Harland
A young American heiress leaves the polished drawing rooms of Europe to claim her heritage in a sleepy New England town, only to discover that her true heart lies where she least expected to find it.
Ambrotox and Limping Dick
Oliver Fleming
A brilliant chemical discovery, a sinister global syndicate, and a relentless pursuit across the English countryside ignite this high-octane vintage thriller.
Avoidance Situation
James V. McConnell
Confronted by an alien scout whose force fields make him literally invincible, a human starship captain must choose between the immediate enslavement of Earth and a desperate escape into an empty realm of shadow.
Breaking Point
James E. Gunn
A starship's metal skin holds, but human minds buckle under the pressure of an alien test.
Eden: An Episode
Edgar Saltus
A gilded Manhattan apartment turns into a labyrinth of suspicion when a young bride discovers that a single unexamined secret can corrode an entire world of luxury.
Interrupted
Pansy
When financial ruin disrupts a young woman’s comfortable social circle, she turns an unwanted teaching job in a small town into a quiet campaign for community renewal, personal faith, and practical usefulness.
Pietro Ghisleri
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A poisonous rumor in nineteenth-century Rome sets two sisters against one another, turning aristocratic drawing rooms into a battlefield where envy weaponizes social malice.
Sunny-San
Onoto Watanna
In Nagasaki, four young Americans rescue a bright, biracial girl from a joyhouse, binding their fates to her joyous, unpredictable journey across two oceans to New York.
![Cover of The Cabin [La barraca]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-cabin-la-barraca-vicente-blasco-ibanez.webp)
The Cabin [La barraca]
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Generations of spite turn a fertile Spanish plain into a battleground where an innocent family’s dream of bread becomes a burnt offering.
The Vanishing Point
Coningsby Dawson
Two parallel rails of possibility and desire stretch toward a distant horizon where idealists seek their tragic, ultimate point of convergence.
Tony and the Beetles
Philip K. Dick
A young Terran boy raised on a conquered alien world faces a sudden reckoning when the balance of cosmic power tilts away from humanity.
Babes in the Bush
Rolf Boldrewood
A displaced Scottish family seeks a new beginning on an old Australian estate, confronting bushfires, wild country, and romantic missteps.
Rosa Mundi and Other Stories
Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
A young girl wanders down to a lonely coastal breakwater to escape a giant crab, only to interrupt a solitary novelist and spark a chain of secrets.
The Boy in the Bush
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A young Englishman sent to 1880s Western Australia rejects conventional respectability, surviving bush dangers and personal losses to forge a fierce, independent destiny on the frontier.
Waste Not, Want
Dave Dryfoos
An eighty-six-year-old widower struggles to preserve his autonomy in a future society where citizens are legally forced to consume vast surpluses of goods.
Peace
Norman Arkawy
A bureaucratically cheerful conquest announcement slowly reveals that the peaceful alien victory Earth just suffered is actually a hyper-regulated, terrifying nightmare.
Ruth Erskine's Son
Pansy
A mother’s protective devotion faces its ultimate test when her beloved son’s hasty marriage threatens to upend their lives and unearth a buried family secret.
The Adventurer
C. M. (Cyril M.) Kornbluth
A ruthless tyrant falls not to chance, but to an orchestrated genetic and psychological experiment designed to breed the ultimate conqueror.
The Wedding Guest: A Friend of the Bride and Bridegroom
Unknown
The entry into marriage rarely comes with the maturity or self-knowledge needed to sustain it, leaving two independent minds to face the sudden, quiet shock of living as one.
Driftwood Spars: The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life
Percival Christopher Wren
A soul born into two worlds, belonging fully to neither, carries inside himself the seeds of his own tragedy.
Walter Pieterse: A Story of Holland
Multatuli
A boy's boundless imagination collides with the stifling, pious respectability of mid-nineteenth-century Dutch middle-class life.
An index finger
Tulis Abrojal
This narrative explores the restless pursuit of spiritual truth, following a woman who rejects the suffocating conventions of her time to seek deeper meaning in the unseen forces of existence.
Anthony the Absolute
Samuel Merwin
A quiet, scholarly man finds his life of pure intellect upended when he becomes the reluctant protector of a desperate woman in turn-of-the-century Asia.
Creatures That Once Were Men
Maksim Gorky
A grim portrayal of the lives of the destitute in late 19th-century Russia, exploring the depths of human degradation and the flicker of humanity within.
Much Ado About Something
C. E. (Charles Edward) Lawrence
This fable of an enchanted intervention in the heart of London offers a whimsical yet earnest look at how a touch of magic might mend the social divides of a bustling, weary city.
The Blind Musician
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
A blind boy struggles to find his place in a sighted world, eventually discovering that true sight comes not from his eyes, but from the depth of his connection to others’ suffering.
The Blue Venus
Robert Emmett McDowell
The fugitive known as The Renegade orchestrates a daring infiltration of a cruel plantation owner’s estate, turning the tables on a man whose reach extends from illicit human experimentation to the exploitation of planetary serfdom.
The Life and Adventures of Guzman D'Alfarache, or the Spanish Rogue, vol. 2/3
Mateo Alemán
This picaresque narrative follows a self-proclaimed rogue whose life is a restless cycle of petty crime, elaborate schemes, and moral posturing. It serves as a sharp, cynical mirror held up to the human condition, detailing the downfall of a man who believes he can outsmart fortune itself.
Tom Clark and His Wife: Their Double Dreams, And the Curious Things that Befell Them Therein
Paschal Beverly Randolph
HOOK A fractious, unhappy couple finds their salvation through the mystical power of dreams, discovering that the health of a marriage is a choice rooted in the soul rather than the courtroom.
A Christian Woman
Pardo Bazán, Emilia, condesa de
A young man finds himself caught in the suffocating gravitational pull of an uncle’s loveless marriage, where duty and desire collide with the rigid expectations of nineteenth-century Spanish life.
Barrington. Volume 2 (of 2)
Charles Lever
A dispossessed gentleman and his family navigate the intrigue of a cunning imposter while struggling to regain their lost inheritance.
Imogen: A Pastoral Romance
William Godwin
This pastoral romance traces the arduous journey of two innocent lovers through a landscape of ancient legend, where virtue acts as a shield against the supernatural machinations of a corrupted magician. It explores the enduring power of sincerity when tested by the trials of a complex world.
Ticket No. "9672"
Jules Verne
A young woman’s romantic hopes become entangled with the cold calculations of a predatory lender when a message in a bottle surfaces from a shipwrecked lover. This story explores how fortune—both financial and existential—can hinge on the most improbable threads of coincidence.
Woman
Magdeleine Marx
A woman’s search for identity unfolds against the backdrop of war, challenging the inherited traditions of marriage, motherhood, and the stifling domestic expectations placed upon her gender.
Christmas Roses and Other Stories
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
Winter’s harshness serves as the backdrop for these delicate, probing studies of internal quietude and the persistent, often painful, effort required to sustain human affection.
A Canadian Bankclerk
Jack Preston
This novel follows a young man’s disillusionment as he trades the promise of higher education for the rigid, underpaid life of a junior bank clerk in early 20th-century Canada. It is a candid look at the quiet traps of white-collar drudgery.
Little Johannes
Frederik van Eeden
A young boy wanders from the safety of his home into a realm of spirit and symbol, only to discover that the path to truth requires embracing the suffering of humanity.
Parables of a Province
Gilbert Parker
The human spirit finds its way home through silence, sacrifice, and the persistent pull of memory. These fables map the rugged terrain of the soul, where the weight of a choice can outlast the mountains.