Free summaries
Novels — page 17
2,574 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 17 of 54.
The 13th juror
Leslie Waltham
A long-distance astronaut faces execution in a future where emotion is a capital offense, until a mysterious final juror reveals the light-speed illusion behind his deadly jealousy.
The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
Ulrich Nebendahl is a gentle, introspective wheelwright who struggles to find the singular romantic passion the world expects of him. Instead, he discovers a profound, self-sacrificing love for his entire community and all living things.
The Pauper of Park Lane
William Le Queux
A retail assistant disappears, a sinister plot threatens a ruthless City financier, and an eerie Russian interior lies hidden inside a London mansion.
The Vortex Blaster
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
A brilliant physicist, shattered by the loss of his family to a laboratory accident, transforms his grief into a singular, dangerous mission to purge the galaxy of lethal, uncontrolled atomic energy.
Alien Minds
E. Everett (Edward Everett) Evans
A secret agent with the power to project his mind into animals must stop a political conspiracy on a distant, alien world.
Ozymandias
Ivar Jorgensen
On a desolate, nameless world at the edge of the galaxy, five scientists and seven soldiers stumble upon an immortal alien machine standing alone among the dust.
The Dark Other
Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) Weinbaum
A dark, brooding presence threatens to shatter a young woman's world as her brilliant companion succumbs to an inexplicable, violent alternate identity that hungers for control.
The Snare
Richard Rein Smith
A party of moon-walkers stumbles into an ancient alien trap that snatches them into hyperspace, forcing them to find a way out of an impossible cage.
Cape of Storms: A Novel
Percival Pollard
Youthful ambition burns bright, but the cynicism of the modern city proves a dangerous reef for a tender heart.
Drowsy
John Ames Mitchell
A gifted, daydreaming boy discovers he can transmit thoughts and manipulate physical forces, leading him from a quiet village to an astonishing flight across the solar system.
My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard
Elizabeth Cooper
A noblewoman’s intimate letters track the quiet collapse of traditional China beneath the encroaching tides of Western influence and generational change.
Operation Interstellar
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
Faster-than-light travel has conquered space, but humanity remains isolated across the stars by a delay in communication that only one disgraced engineer believes he can bridge.
The Blue Germ
Maurice Nicoll
A secret medical experiment promises humanity total freedom from disease and death, only to reveal that physical immortality strips life of passion, releases terrible societal hatreds, and brings civilization to a sudden, silent standstill.
The Bride of Dreams
Frederik van Eeden
In a quiet Dutch town, an aging man looks back across a lifetime torn between high spiritual longings and the wild, instinctual forces of human desire.
The Silver Stallion: A Comedy of Redemption
James Branch Cabell
A legendary hero leaves behind a void that his followers fill not with truth, but with convenient, comforting myths of his return.
This World Is Taboo
Murray Leinster
Driven by unexamined fear, two isolated planetary colonies hover on the brink of mutual destruction until a traveling medical officer uses biology and basic human logic to dismantle their feud.
Beautiful but poor
Julia Edwards
A poor working girl in late nineteenth-century New York guards a mysterious past while transforming every life she touches across a city of harsh boardinghouses and hidden fortunes.
Ditte: Girl Alive!
Martin Andersen Nexø
Born into the world without wedlock, a child inherits the heavy burden of her community's quiet cruelty before she takes her first breath. ---
Metamorphosis
Charles V. De Vet
Extraterrestrial parasites grant two scouts extraordinary abilities, but their deadly final form forces one man into a high-stakes hunt to destroy his former friend before humanity is consumed.
All in the dark
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The mysteries of memory and the burdens of expectation weigh heavily on the young, but often resolve in the most mundane of ways. This narrative explores the quiet anxieties of a displaced nephew and the eccentric, sometimes suffocating, love of the aunt who raised him.
Out of the Earth
George Edrich
This story follows a group of political prisoners sentenced to "elimination" in a vast, subterranean labyrinth. They must navigate a world of suffocating darkness, dwindling resources, and the existential terror of a mythic predator known as the Grole.
Star Ship
Poul Anderson
HOOK Stranded on a brutal, Iron Age planet, the last descendants of an interstellar crew fight a desperate war to reach their derelict starship before a local tyrant seizes control of the galaxy.
The Judas Valley
Randall Garrett
The survival of an entire crew depends on one man’s ability to outwit a silent, burrowing enemy that turns human beings into unwilling puppets. This taut science fiction thriller pits individual intuition against a hive-mind threat.
Doctor Claudius, A True Story
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A scholar of humble means finds his life transformed by sudden, vast wealth and an all-consuming devotion to a woman he barely knows. This tale of high-stakes inheritance and transatlantic romance captures the tensions between old-world aristocratic codes and the shifting social landscape of the nineteenth century.
Footsteps of Fate
Louis Couperus
A quiet, creeping dread defines the bond between two men whose lives become inextricably and fatally tangled. Beneath the veneer of Victorian propriety lies a psychological nightmare where choice is a phantom and character is destiny.
Lamia's Winter-Quarters
Alfred Austin
This account of a winter escape to Tuscany captures the gentle rhythm of a life devoted to beauty, conversation, and the timeless landscapes of Italy. It serves as a quiet, meditative travelogue for those who cherish the intersection of nature and classical culture.
Roland Graeme: Knight. A Novel of Our Time
Agnes Maule Machar
The struggle to balance individual ambition with the urgent needs of the working class defines a young man's quest for purpose in a rapidly industrializing city.
The Flower of Forgiveness
Flora Annie Webster Steel
HOOK These stories capture the intersection of two worlds in colonial India, where the weight of ancient tradition meets the inexorable, often clumsy, pressure of Western law.
The space visitors
Edmond Hamilton
The sky holds a silent, terrifying menace, and humanity’s only hope for survival lies in understanding the nature of an enemy that views our entire world as nothing more than a bottom-feeder’s harvest.
Danger
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
The social glass may seem an innocent pleasure, but beneath the surface of refined entertainment lies a hidden, perilous current that threatens to destroy the lives of the unsuspecting.
Pariah Planet
Murray Leinster
When a plague-stricken world is marked for extinction by its neighbors, a lone medical officer must use science and diplomacy to prevent a galactic genocide.
Quicksands
Adolf Streckfuss
A man burdened by debt and despair finds a second chance by assuming a new identity, only to discover that the past—and the people he left behind—are never truly out of reach.
The Old Die Rich
H. L. (Horace Leonard) Gold
The mystery of impoverished elders found dead with fortunes hidden in their clothing leads an amateur detective into a dangerous, chronal conspiracy. This story explores the intersection of method acting, time travel, and cold-blooded opportunism.
The Sinister Invasion
Edmond Hamilton
A routine life as an electrical engineer ends when a mysterious stranger recruits a man for a dangerous, interstellar intelligence mission.
When the pilgrims hit Piperock
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
HOOK In the dusty, chaotic heart of a Montana cow-town, a reluctant group of cowboys finds themselves roped into a disastrous Thanksgiving pageant that promises more gunpowder than grace.
Kittens
Svend Fleuron
This chronicle follows a litter of kittens born into the wild, capturing the harsh, instinctive beauty of their struggle for survival against farmers, dogs, and the elements. It is an unsentimental, vivid portrait of feline life that reads like a naturalistic epic.
Mimi's Marriage
Lidiia Ivanovna Veselitskaia
This brisk, witty social satire exposes the hollow artifice of late 19th-century Russian high society. It follows a young woman’s disillusioning journey from a "brilliant" arranged marriage to the realization that her life is merely a performative dance of vanity.
![Cover of Tales of My Time, Vol. 2 (of 3): Who Is She? [concluded]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/tales-of-my-time-vol-2-of-3-who-is-she-concluded-william-pitt-scargill.webp)
Tales of My Time, Vol. 2 (of 3): Who Is She? [concluded]
William Pitt Scargill
The quiet tragedy of a nameless woman’s displacement meets the brash, ill-fated idealism of revolutionary youth in this dual-narrative portrait of late eighteenth-century social upheaval.
The Revolt of the Star Men
Raymond Z. (Raymond Zinke) Gallun
An Earthman and his companion must defend two planets from a power-hungry Martian nobleman who commands a legion of monstrous, insect-like warriors from the depths of space. This gripping tale of interplanetary intrigue explores the thin line between absolute villainy and the complex motivations of an alien culture.
The Vermilion Pencil: A Romance of China
Homer Lea
The Vermilion Pencil is a haunting, atmospheric exploration of fate, forbidden love, and the collision of empires in early 20th-century China. It chronicles the lives of a sheltered tea-farmer’s daughter and a mysterious foreigner whose destinies intersect amidst the decaying grandeur of an ancient civilization.
Wild Honey: Stories of South Africa
Cynthia Stockley
The vast, unforgiving expanses of the early twentieth-century African veld serve as a crucible for human desire, where colonial ambition and personal tragedy collide with the indifferent power of the landscape.
Yermah the Dorado: The story of a lost race
Frona Eunice Wait
A legendary leader navigates the decline of a utopian civilization in this ambitious, mythic chronicle of a lost continent. It serves as both a sweeping fantasy romance and a philosophical meditation on the cyclical nature of human progress.
A Modern Cinderella
Amanda M. Douglas
A quiet, hardworking orphan finds her life transformed when an unexpected illness leads her into the care of a woman she imagines as her fairy godmother.
Dora
Johanna Spyri
A grieving girl finds a new family and a renewed capacity for joy through the kindness of neighbors in the Swiss countryside.
Sense of Obligation
Harry Harrison
A gifted athlete from an extreme environment accepts a desperate mission to stop a planetary war, only to discover that the true conflict lies in the nature of life itself.
The Best Man
Harold MacGrath
A man discovers a secret that could ruin the woman he loves, forcing a choice between his own integrity and his desire for happiness. This collection of stories captures the tension between public reputation and private conscience in the early twentieth-century American social landscape.
Arne
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
A solitary boy in the Norwegian highlands grapples with a tragic family legacy and his own restless spirit. This lyrical narrative explores the transformative power of love, song, and the quiet search for belonging.
Claire: The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, by a Blind Author
Leslie Burton Blades
The struggle between two men for the heart of a woman is intensified when one is a blind artist and the other a sighted possessive protector. This raw drama explores the boundaries of human desire and perception.