Free summaries
Novels — page 18
2,574 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 18 of 54.
That worlds may live
Nelson S. Bond
The universe faces a silent, encroaching catastrophe as stars begin to fade, and a small group of Earth scientists must embark on an impossible, desperate journey across the galaxy to prevent total annihilation.
The End of the Rainbow
Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
The pursuit of personal ambition often masks a deeper, quieter purpose, and this story traces the long journey required for a young man to finally see the truth.
The Invisible Foe: A Story Adapted from the Play by Walter Hackett
Louise Jordan Miln
The mystery of a missing fortune and a shattered family finds resolution through the quiet persistence of love and the possibility of a message from beyond the veil.
The World Masters
George Chetwynd Griffith
A lone scientist’s discovery of a world-altering power creates a dangerous race between competing empires and a private Anglo-American syndicate. This high-stakes thriller pits the old aristocratic order against the emerging dominance of industrial technology.
Thin Edge
Randall Garrett
A space-faring prospector finds himself trapped in a political web on Earth, where he turns the technology of his trade into a lethal weapon of psychological warfare.
"Good-Morning, Rosamond!"
Constance Lindsay Skinner
The widow of a local icon finds herself trapped in a life of performative mourning until a series of midnight intrusions and a sudden arrival shatter the suffocating decorum of her village.
The Cosmic Courtship
Julian Hawthorne
A young woman and her suitor cross the vast gulf of space to Saturn, discovering a world where science and spirit are one, and the mundane laws of New York fade into legend.
Venusian Invader
Larry Sternig
A ruthless space pirate holds a colony director’s daughter hostage, forcing a desperate countdown that hinges on the rigid, mechanical routines of a remote spaceport.
White Dandy
Velma Caldwell Melville
The life of a companion animal is a silent struggle for dignity, observed through the eyes of a horse who bears witness to the kindness and cruelty of human masters.
Kings of the night
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A Pictish king faces the extinction of his people at the hands of Rome. In his darkest hour, he pulls an ancient hero from the distant past into the present to change the course of history.
Mercenary
Mack Reynolds
In a future where corporate wars are fought as televised spectacles, a battle-hardened mercenary gambles his life and career to challenge the rigid caste system governing his society.
Robinc
Anthony Boucher
The quest to replace inefficient, human-shaped androids with specialized "usuform" robots sparks a corporate war that tests the limits of human greed, political influence, and the fragile nature of machine logic.
The Desire of Life
Matilde Serao
HOOK In the rarefied, glittering air of the Swiss Alps, a circle of international high-society travelers finds their pursuits of pleasure and status shadowed by an encroaching, inevitable sense of mortal decay.
Ye of Little Faith
Rog Phillips
A scholar’s fatal error ripples through the world, transforming a private intellectual pursuit into a dangerous, inexplicable epidemic of vanishing. What begins as a curiosity of logic becomes a haunting, irreversible journey into the unknown.
Battle for the Stars
Edmond Hamilton
An unexpected order draws a seasoned commander and his fleet back to a forgotten homeworld, where a quiet frontier planet becomes the pivot point for a galaxy-spanning war.
Mrs. Hallam's companion
Mary Jane Holmes
A humble young woman leaves her family’s struggling estate to earn money as a wealthy woman’s companion, only to face social prejudice, secret romances, and identity mix-ups across Europe.
The universe wreckers
Edmond Hamilton
When the sun begins to accelerate its spin, threatening to break apart and destroy the solar system, four Earthmen set out across the void to disarm the cosmic ray responsible.
Downstream
Sigfrid Siwertz
A decaying Swedish estate becomes the incubator for five orphaned siblings who spend their lives sacrificing affection, integrity, and one another to the relentless pursuit of material power.
Thoth: A Romance
J. Shield (Joseph Shield) Nicholson
A mysterious emissary offers safety from a dying city, drawing an Athenian woman into a hidden world where supreme intellect has declared war on human emotion.
Where the Path Breaks
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
A wounded, forgotten soldier returns from the dead to write a book for the woman he loved—only to discover that his silence has set in motion a tragic second marriage.
Geordie's Tryst: A Tale of Scottish Life
Janet Milne Rae
Driven by a quiet impulse, a young Scottish girl sets out into a chilly spring wind, seeking to change a life she barely knows.
The Story of a Lover
Hutchins Hapgood
A man’s decades-long search for a total, transcendent connection with his wife tests the absolute limits of love, jealousy, and spiritual devotion in marriage.
The Temptress
William Le Queux
A glamorous web of crime, extortion, and secret identities spans the continent as a charismatic femme fatale ensnares an innocent Englishman into her deadly, intricate schemes.
Deadly City
Paul W. Fairman
A night of total silence falls over Chicago as millions of residents vanish overnight, leaving behind a ghost city of unlocked doors, cold coffee, and open vaults.
Maximina
Armando Palacio Valdés
A young woman’s gentle spirit anchoring an impulsive journalist through the treacherous politics and social ladder-climbing of late nineteenth-century Madrid.
Ministry of Disturbance
H. Beam Piper
An empire built on five centuries of total stagnation begins to rot from within unless someone intentionally stirs the ashes.
The Heart of Hyacinth
Onoto Watanna
A young white woman, raised as Japanese in coastal Sendai, must choose between her adoptive heritage and her biological father when foreign intrusion disrupts her home.
The Winding Stair
A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
A young man with an erased identity must choose between the comfort of an easy life and the grueling climb to redeem his family's name.
The Window-Gazer
Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
A woman who fears marriage as a trap of subjection agrees to a practical union with a quiet scholar seeking relief from his overbearing aunt.
Transfer Point
Anthony Boucher
A time traveler writes his own future, trapped in a loop where every word he authors brings him closer to the moment he creates himself.
Inside Earth
Poul Anderson
Under deep cover on Earth, an alien agent orchestrates a human rebellion designed to fail, only to fall in love with one of its leaders.
The Buttoned Sky
Robert W. Krepps
A young miner named Revel wakes in a bleak future to discover that a single blow from his pickax can destroy the hovering, glowing globes worshiped as gods, sparking a violent revolution that shatters a feudal system enforced by gun-toting squires and six-legged alien beasts.
The High Place: A Comedy of Disenchantment
James Branch Cabell
A nobleman who dreams of absolute beauty and holiness awakens a legendary princess, only to find that securing his highest ideals delivers none of the fulfillment he expected.
The professor's experiment: A novel, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Duchess
A dying girl saved by a professor’s scientific breakthrough finds herself at the center of romantic misunderstandings, local gossip, and social friction in rural Ireland.
The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel
John Miller
A dedicated bushman visits Sydney and discovers that the promises of Australian prosperity hide systemic urban poverty, union-busting, and bitter class division.
Adela Cathcart, Volume 3
George MacDonald
Healing quiet replaces a long season of domestic melancholy when a warm-hearted country circle gathers around the hearth to share transformative stories.
Arne: A Sketch of Norwegian Country Life
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
A quiet, lyrical exploration of a young man’s inner life, this story traces the slow growth of a soul amidst the rugged, isolating beauty of the Norwegian countryside.
Operation Terror
Murray Leinster
A surveyor stumbles upon an impossible invasion, only to discover that the terrifying extraterrestrial threat is a calculated ruse designed to manipulate global politics.
The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars: Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd
L. P. (Louis Pope) Gratacap
A grieving son attempts to bridge the vast silence of the cosmos, hoping to reach his deceased father through the mysterious, ethereal frequencies of a distant planet.
The Law Inevitable
Louis Couperus
The inevitability of the human heart, with its stubborn, irrational loyalties, often defies the intellectual frameworks we build to escape them. This story explores the haunting, inescapable gravity of a past that refuses to be forgotten.
The Ten-foot Chain
Max Brand
Four writers attempt to solve a simple, provocative question: What happens to a man and a woman when they are forced to live together, physically tethered by a ten-foot chain, for three days?
Wailing Wall
Roger D. Aycock
A stranded crew discovers a colonial society driven to madness by an alien technological trap, forcing them to confront the dangerous necessity of human connection.
Walladmor, Vol. 2 (of 2): "Freely Translated into German from the English of Sir Walter Scott." And Now Freely Translated from the German into English
Willibald Alexis
The shadows of a forgotten literary hoax breathe new life into this tale of Welsh rebellion, lost children, and the turbulent search for identity. A story of obsession, it bridges the gap between historical romance and the haunting, fragmented nature of memory.
Taquisara
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
The bonds of blood and the ghosts of the past collide in a crumbling Neapolitan house, where a young heiress finds her inheritance—and her life—threatened by the calculated malice of her own kin.
The Sound of Silence
Barbara Constant
The ultimate loneliness is not being alone in a crowd, but being the only one who can hear the thoughts of those surrounding you.
Infiltration
Algis Budrys
An ancient, cosmic war between two factions of stranded travelers plays out through the proxy of human history, as one weary operative finally prepares to end his long, violent watch.
Richard Richard
Hughes Mearns
A wandering, penniless intellectual finds himself drawn into the tangled emotional life of a wealthy, fractured family. This story explores whether deep-seated neuroses and broken spirits can be mended through the power of human connection.
A Prairie Courtship
Harold Bindloss
A young woman strikes out for a new life on the harsh Canadian frontier, where she encounters a man reinventing himself through the punishing labor of the homestead.