Free summaries
Novels — page 18
1,109 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 18 of 24.
The 13th Immortal
Robert Silverberg
Stripped of his memories, a simple farmer discovers he is the true heir to an immortal lineage, holding the power to shatter the despotic rulers who keep a post-apocalyptic world frozen in time.
The Princess And The Jewel Doctor: 1905
Robert Hichens
A wealthy Russian woman haunted by the threat of hereditary blindness turns to a Tunisian healer, whose miraculous green ring exacts an unexpected, lifelong toll.
A World is Born
Leigh Brackett
High above a dead world's storms, a cynical fugitive and a desperate idealist discover that human redemption is as sudden and unpredictable as a lightning strike on Mercury.
Harry Harding's Year of Promise
Alfred Raymond
A boy learns that work is its own kind of adventure in a big department store.
Ladies Must Live
Alice Duer Miller
A cynical social satire turns on an unexpected hinge when two mercenary high-society players drop their defenses and fall in love. In 1910s New York, staying wealthy is a full-time job.
Local option in Loco-Land
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
When two dry-prospecting panners return to town, they stumble right into the crossfire of a local prohibition campaign and an election that no one seems to understand.
Once a Greech
Evelyn E. Smith
A well-meaning crew of terrestrial explorers mistakes the natural biological metamorphosis of a gentle alien life-form for a profound cosmic religion, with absurd and irreversible consequences for everyone on board.
And Thus He Came: A Christmas Fantasy
Cyrus Townsend Brady
When the world breaks into violence, greed, or despair, a quiet presence walks through the shadows to touch human lives at their lowest ebb.
Cicely and Other Stories
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
Five young women navigate poverty, pride, and social expectations, discovering that true gentlehood rests on helpfulness, self-reliance, and genuine warm-heartedness rather than idle tradition or superficial vanity.
For the Right
Karl Emil Franzos
A man of unwavering moral conviction finds himself forced to become an outlaw to defend the truth. His journey from a humble peasant to a symbol of justice reveals the terrible cost of seeking righteousness in a broken world.
The Hearts of Men
H. (Harold) Fielding
Religion is the music of the infinite echoed from the hearts of men. It is an exploration of why we believe what we believe, and how our deepest instincts—not our intellects—shape our understanding of the divine.
The Venus Trap
Evelyn E. Smith
A human colonist on a distant, beautiful planet finds his marriage strained by an unexpected rival: a sentient, telepathic, and deeply romantic tree.
This Finer Shadow
Harlan Cozad McIntosh
A young man’s search for identity unfolds against the backdrop of the Depression-era Bowery and the maritime world, navigating the friction between desperate love, social artifice, and the desire for freedom.
By Wit of Woman
Arthur W. Marchmont
A young woman of indomitable spirit travels to Hungary to restore her disgraced father’s name, only to find herself ensnared in a web of political intrigue and a volatile, forbidden romance. Armed with little more than her wits and a sharp American sensibility, she must outmaneuver the nobility to save the innocent.
Cat and Mouse
Ralph Williams
In the frozen silence of an Alaskan wilderness, a lonely trapper discovers a rift in reality. He must outwit an alien intelligence that views his entire world as nothing more than a field for harvest.
Marguerite Verne
Rebecca Agatha Armour
The story follows the lives of the genteel Verne family in St. John, New Brunswick, amidst a backdrop of social ambition and personal sacrifice. It is a Victorian-era narrative that explores the tension between duty to one’s family and the pursuit of individual happiness.
The Invaders
Murray Leinster
A man discovers that strangers among us are not merely spies, but visitors from another world. He must navigate a dangerous game of shadows to protect the future of Earth.
The Wanderers
Mary Johnston
The wanderers of history are not merely those who travel across maps, but those who journey through the evolving consciousness of human freedom. This collection of linked tales follows a single, recurring soul—a man and a woman—as they traverse the ages, seeking liberation from the constraints of their respective…
Wild Margaret
Charles Garvice
A young woman’s secret visit to a forbidden gallery sets off a chain of ruinous misunderstandings and long-buried secrets. This dramatic tale of class, cruelty, and redemption follows the turbulent intersection of two lives forever altered by a single chance encounter.
Doctor Therne
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
HOOK A once-brilliant physician finds his life unraveled by his own public crusade against vaccination. As a deadly epidemic strikes his community, his hypocrisy becomes a weapon that eventually destroys everything he holds dear.
In Search of a Son
William S. Walsh
HOOK A grieving man returns from years of exile searching for a lost child, only to find the answer to his heart’s deepest question hidden in plain sight among his friends’ children.
No Great Magic
Fritz Leiber
HOOK A theater troupe performs Shakespeare in Central Park, but their stage is a gateway to the currents of history, where actors engage in a desperate, secret war to preserve the timeline.
The Fourth Estate, vol. 2
Armando Palacio Valdés
The social climbing of a provincial family fractures their lives when a bored, predatory aristocrat enters their orbit, leading to a clash between crumbling traditions and the raw impulses of human desire.
The Progressionists, and Angela
Conrad von Bolanden
This 19th-century work of fiction explores the collision between traditional Catholic values and the secular, materialist "progressionist" movement, following a young man's journey from skepticism toward faith. It is a polemical novel of ideas that uses the lives of its characters to debate the moral consequences…
A Girl of the North: A Story of London and Canada
Susan Morrow Jones
A woman caught between the expectations of London society and the wild, untamed spirit of her Canadian upbringing discovers that true devotion is rarely found in the arrangements of the heartless.
Armageddon, 1970
Robert W. Krepps
Humanity stands on the precipice of a silent invasion, caught between warring factions of advanced beings who have long walked among us. When atomic fire rains down on Manhattan, the true cost of our manipulation by these hidden masters finally comes to light.
By Proxy
Randall Garrett
HOOK A persistent reporter shadows an arrogant, self-proclaimed genius attempting a revolutionary space flight, only to uncover a complex web of government bureaucracy, stolen credit, and the crushing weight of public fame.
Earthmen Ask No Quarter!
Fox B. Holden
HOOK When Earth’s military leadership surrenders to an overwhelming alien fleet, a single, overlooked commander decides that the survival of humanity is worth more than a direct order.
The Argonauts
Eliza Orzeszkowa
The pursuit of gold is a solitary, hollow voyage that leaves the traveler stranded when the harbor of human connection is finally reached. This stark study of obsession examines the wreckage left behind by those who chase the golden fleece at the expense of their own souls.
The Black Opal
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Life on a remote Australian opal field is governed by the shifting, unpredictable fire of the stones and the fierce, communal loyalty of the miners who dig for them.
The Observations of Professor Maturin
Clyde Furst
The world, as seen through the eyes of a gentle scholar, reveals itself as a landscape of endless curiosity and quiet, observant wisdom. These collected reflections invite the reader to slow down and find significance in the mundane.
The Vilbar Party
Evelyn E. Smith
A grumpy, scholarly alien expects to endure a year of hostile isolation on Earth, only to discover that being perceived as a cuddly curiosity is a far more exhausting burden.
The White Shield
Myrtle Reed
These stories explore the quiet, internal landscapes of the human heart, where the smallest gestures of affection often carry the heaviest weight of meaning.
Bodyguard
H. L. (Horace Leonard) Gold
In a future where bodies are mere commodities traded like furniture, a man hunts his own stolen identity through a landscape of crime, revenge, and hollow glamour.
Orphans of the Void
Michael Shaara
An interstellar mission uncovers a desolate planet where thousands of metal beings have waited for twenty-five millennia. Their existence is defined by a singular, tragic imperative: to serve masters who perished long ago.
The Cruise of the Shining Light
Norman Duncan
The story of a grotesque, one-legged mariner and the orphan he raises in a remote Newfoundland harbor explores the complex, often hidden, threads of love and redemption that bind the broken together.
The Unnecessary Man
Randall Garrett
A cynical exploration of power and loyalty, this story reveals how an imperial government maintains control through the calculated sacrifice of its own servants.
Crimes of Charity
Konrad Bercovici
This piercing exposé uncovers the brutal machinery of early 20th-century New York social services, where the plight of the city’s most vulnerable is treated as a commodity for administrative efficiency and bureaucratic indifference.
Preferred Risk
Edson McCann
HOOK In a future where a global insurance monopoly controls life and death, an adjuster discovers that the "safety" of his corporate masters is a facade built upon a foundation of absolute, calculated control.
Revolution
Mack Reynolds
A Cold War operative infiltrates the Soviet Union to spark a revolution, only to realize the rebels he is helping might be a greater threat to Western interests than the regime they intend to replace.
Sea Legs
Frank Quattrocchi
A veteran spaceman finally returns to his home planet, only to discover that the freedom of the cosmos has been replaced by the stifling, bureaucratic nightmare of Earth.
The Shooting of Dan McGrew, A Novel. Based on the Famous Poem of Robert Service
Robert W. (Robert William) Service
A wronged husband and a duplicitous villain collide in the frozen North, where long-buried secrets and a stolen daughter finally come to light. This dramatic expansion of a classic poem turns a legendary saloon confrontation into a sprawling tale of frontier vengeance.
The Soul of a Child
Edwin Björkman
A sensitive, observant boy navigates the suffocating constraints of his family’s middle-class poverty in late nineteenth-century Stockholm, searching for his own identity amid conflicting expectations. This contemplative portrait of early adolescence captures the quiet, often painful, transition from the dependency…
The Space Flame
Alexander M. (Alexander Moore) Phillips
A drifting, hollowed-out spaceship becomes a trap for its crew, who must fend off both a violent mutiny and an invasive, alien lifeform that feeds on the very structure of their vessel.
Voyage To Eternity
Stephen Marlowe
The future is a game of high-stakes attrition where those selected for the mysterious "Nowhere Journey" never return, leaving behind only the ghosts of their former lives. This story explores the cost of survival in a universe governed by arbitrary, cold-blooded competition.
Cue for Quiet
T. L. Sherred
A factory worker discovers he possesses a terrifying, godlike ability to silence machines and stop engines with a mere thought. Suddenly, the most ordinary man in America becomes the world’s most dangerous and highly guarded secret.
Happy
Walter Flavius McCaleb
This narrative follows the life of a bee, charting its transformation from a larval state into a worker, explorer, and veteran of a hive’s complex social cycles. It is a meditation on duty, mortality, and the relentless pulse of the natural world.
Success and How He Won It
E. Werner
The cold, impenetrable walls of a loveless marriage dissolve into an unlikely partnership when the brutal realities of the industrial mine, not the salon, force a husband and wife to truly see one another.