Free summaries
Novels — page 14
1,000 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 14 of 21.
The Path of Life
Stijn Streuvels
A young boy sits in a sunlit loft, watching a ribbon of white sand cut through the fields toward an unknown horizon.
The Shadow Witch
Gertrude Crownfield
A gentle hearthside realm of magic unfolds where love turns shadow into light.
Grey Town
Gerald R. (Gerald Robert) Baldwin
A turbulent coastal river and an idealistic Irish-Australian community form the backdrop for a story of ambition, lost faith, and redemption.
One Day's Courtship, and The Heralds of Fame
Robert Barr
Two swift romancing tales of artists, writers, and sudden transatlantic sparks unfold along Canadian rivers and across the open sea.
Pandemic
Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone
Inside a sealed quarantine lab, a widowed nurse and a cynical pathologist confront a mutant plague that kills indiscriminately—only to discover that an ubiquitous, unlikely habit holds the secret to human survival.
A Reversion To Type
Josephine Daskam Bacon
A quiet academic life begins to unravel when an unmarried instructor of thirty realizes that seven years of teaching have left her hollow, prompting a sudden, reckless attempt to reclaim the love she abandoned in Germany.
Planet explorer
Murray Leinster
A lone engineer armed only with physics, field equipment, and stubborn self-respect stands between fragile human colonies and immediate, bizarre extinction.
Scanners live in vain
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
A man surrenders his senses to survive the agonizing void of deep space, only to discover that the breakthrough rendering his sacrifice obsolete will cost him his purpose, his brotherhood, and very likely his life.
Subspace Survivors
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
The starship Procyon drops out of space into a fatal hazard, leaving nine survivors trapped aboard a drifting hulk who must master an unknown physical field to survive.
The Dangerous Age: Letters and Fragments from a Woman's Diary
Karin Michaëlis
A forty-three-year-old woman abandons her comfortable marriage to seek solitude on a remote island, only to confront the bitter psychological and physical realities of middle age.
The Stars, My Brothers
Edmond Hamilton
Sleeping for a century in space leaves a man without a home, a time, or the comfort of easy human loyalties.
August First
Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
A young woman facing a grim diagnosis steps into an empty parish house during a midsummer thunderstorm, seeking a reason not to end her life.
"Le Monsieur de la Petite Dame"
Frances Hodgson Burnett
In high-society Paris, a dismissed, self-effacing husband quietly risks his life to save his young American wife from public ruin and her own shallow self-delusion.
The curse of the painted cliffs
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A tough young woman in a brutal desert mining town holds out against corruption while waiting to settle a debt of honor.
The Jew
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski
A solitary voice can pull a nation back from the edge of its own madness.
The Six Fingers of Time
R. A. Lafferty
A sudden fracture of time grants a quiet clerk total freedom, only to reveal the terrifying cost of living at sixty times the speed of the world.
A dreadful temptation
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A young woman sells her youth to an aging millionaire for revenge, only to find that every trick she plays traps her further in her own deceit.
Penelope's Postscripts
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
An observant American artist frames her European travels through vivid vignettes of humor, quiet sentiment, and sharp domestic insight.
The finding of Jasper Holt
Grace Livingston Hill
Stranded on the Western plains after a train derailment, a minister's daughter must rely on a mysterious local outcast to lead her to safety.
The Line of Love
James Branch Cabell
A line of mortal lovers yields to the illusion of romance, capturing brief, skyey heights of adoration before settling into the sensible, compromising world.
Far from Home
J. A. Taylor
This story captures the primal terror of being stranded in the void and the desperate, makeshift ingenuity required to survive when the laws of orbital mechanics turn against a solitary human.
Strangers at Lisconnel
Jane Barlow
The daily rhythms of a remote Irish hamlet are rarely disturbed by outsiders, yet the arrival of strangers—and the departure of those seeking better fortunes—shapes the very soul of the community.
The Golden House
Sarah S. (Sarah Schoonmaker) Baker
A young Italian boy finds a loving, humble home in Sweden, where his artistic soul and gentle spirit touch the lives of both impoverished neighbors and wealthy aristocrats. This heartwarming tale of belonging crosses cultural boundaries with quiet grace.
Footlights
Rita Weiman
The theater is a crucible where the boundaries between art and life dissolve, leaving the performers to wonder which version of themselves is truly real. This collection of linked stories captures the frantic, glittering, and often hollow existence of those who live their lives in the glare of the stage.
God's Country—And the Woman
James Oliver Curwood
A man returns from the Arctic to a hidden, lush world of mystery, where he finds a woman whose life is guarded by secrets and a pack of wolf-dogs.
Lore of Proserpine
Maurice Hewlett
This reflective work explores the boundary between the mundane world and a parallel realm of nature spirits, positing that fairy encounters are not myths, but spiritual realities. It challenges the reader to reconsider the nature of the unseen.
The dark
Leonid Andreyev
A cornered revolutionary seeks refuge in a brothel, only to find that his rigid moral superiority collapses under the gaze of a woman who demands he confront the darkness within himself.
The Right Time
John Berryman
HOOK In a world where telekinetic surgeons and clairvoyants navigate the political minefield of a high-tech Lodge, one man risks everything to prove that a "witch" from Nevada holds the key to the future.
The Spell
William Dana Orcutt
HOOK A scholar’s obsession with the Renaissance creates a dangerous rift in his marriage, pulling his wife into a test of endurance against the ghosts of history.
1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
Henry Hartshorne
A gentleman of leisure chronicles a future where the world has unified under the banner of English, science, and a reformed Christianity. This vision serves as a hopeful, if idiosyncratic, map of human progress.
Child of the Sun
Leigh Brackett
A desperate rebel and his companions escape a tyrannical regime by flying into the heart of the sun, only to discover an ancient, god-like intelligence hiding in the shadows of a forgotten planet. This encounter forces a final, harrowing confrontation between the limits of human mortality and the stagnant vanity of…
Exile from Space
Judith Merril
A young woman raised in the isolation of a spacecraft descends to Earth to navigate a world that feels alien, grotesque, and magnetic all at once. Her mission is simple, but her encounter with a human test pilot transforms her quiet reconnaissance into a desperate, permanent defection.
Gloria Mundi
Harold Frederic
The inheritance of a vast, crumbling estate becomes a trial of character for a young man caught between his own ideals and the cold machinery of aristocratic life.
Laurel Vane
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A young woman’s secret deception tests the limits of love and pride in this dramatic exploration of truth and forgiveness.
Regeneration
Charles Dye
Humanity has survived the apocalypse, but the remnants of civilization are struggling to rise from the ashes of their own history. An aged, solitary teacher, known as Builder, endeavors to guide a primitive tribe back toward the light of reason, only to find himself competing against the ghost of the past.
Rosinante to the Road Again
John Dos Passos
The quest for an ancient land often leads to the discovery of one's own restlessness. This account captures the vibrant, contradictory spirit of a country caught between its storied past and a modernizing future.
Sekhet
Irene Miller
A young woman’s quest for independence is shadowed by a secret past, forcing a high-stakes gamble to secure her future before her former lover can expose her.
The Golden Flood
Edwin Lefevre
A young man begins depositing unimaginable quantities of gold into a Wall Street bank, terrifying the era’s most powerful financiers with the prospect of an infinite supply.
The Master-Knot of Human Fate
Ellis Meredith
An unexpected cataclysm leaves a man and a woman as the sole survivors of their world, forcing them to confront the isolation of existence and the nature of human connection.
The Moon Rock
Arthur J. (Arthur John) Rees
This mystery unfolds in the bleak, windswept landscapes of the Cornish coast, where an atmosphere of deep-seated dread hangs over a family burdened by secrets. It is a tale of obsession, where a long-sought inheritance and a dark, violent past collide, leaving a trail of death in their wake.
The Secret Power
Marie Corelli
The world is on the precipice of a scientific revolution, but the power to create or destroy lies in the hands of those who command the hidden forces of nature.
Erlach Court
Ossip Schubin
Erlach Court follows a young woman navigating the rigid expectations of European society and the lingering shadows of her family’s past, searching for a future that feels authentically her own.
Little Golden's Daughter
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
Golden Glenalvan lives a sheltered, melancholic life in a crumbling ancestral hall, haunted by the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and her own uncertain parentage. Her quiet existence is upended when she falls in love with a visitor, Bertram Chesleigh, setting off a chain of deception, banishment, and dark…
Pelle the Conqueror
Martin Andersen Nexø
The journey of a boy and his father from humble beginnings to a hard-won maturity, this saga captures the spirit of a laborer’s life with unflinching clarity. It is the story of a world turning toward modernity, told through the eyes of one who grew up in the soil of its fields.
Peter the Priest
Mór Jókai
A determined young monk discovers that his most sacred duty is to confront the dark, vengeful woman who once shattered his life as a knight.
The Fourth Estate, vol. 1
Armando Palacio Valdés
A quiet Spanish coastal town erupts into absurdity when local ambitions and romantic betrayals collide, turning the mundane rhythms of provincial life into a theater of high-stakes farce.
The K-Factor
Harry Harrison
The fate of an entire world rests on a single, impossible calculation. When the math of social stability tips into the red, one man must decide if humanity can be saved by a scientist’s hand or only by a soldier’s trigger.
Nacha Regules
Manuel Gálvez
HOOK A compassionate idealist attempts to rescue a woman from the grim underworld of early 20th-century Buenos Aires, only to discover that societal indifference is a far more formidable opponent than individual vice.