Free summaries
Novels — page 29
2,236 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 29 of 47.
Sun and moon
Vincent H. (Vincent Herbert) Gowen
A young woman caught between two cultures struggles to honor her father’s wishes while navigating the brutal constraints of a traditional Chinese household.
The Birds and the Bees
David E. Fisher
The survival of a species depends on a forgotten, biological secret, forcing two young people to confront a taboo that their ancestors buried under eons of mechanical dependency.
The Catspaw
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
An inventor discovers an interstellar drive through a recurring, alien-induced dream, only to find himself at the center of a cosmic game of chess between two warring galactic empires.
The Easiest Way: Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911
Eugene Walter
A beautiful woman tries to trade a life of easy luxury for a honest marriage, only to find that her past—and her own weakness—will not let her go.
The Gallery
Rog Phillips
A young scholar returns to his small hometown to help his aunt, only to discover that every corner of the village is being quietly observed, recorded, and preserved inside animated portraits.
The gold-stealers
Edward Dyson
In a rough Australian mining town, a band of spirited boys stumbles upon a secret hoard of stolen gold, sparking a desperate, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse that pits childhood innocence against adult crime.
The Heatherford Fortune: a sequel to the Magic Cameo
Sheldon, Georgie, Mrs.
This Victorian-era moral drama tracks the fortunes of a resilient young woman who navigates poverty, dangerous intrigues, and the revelation of long-buried family secrets to secure her future and happiness. It remains a quintessential example of late 19th-century sentimental fiction, pairing high-stakes melodrama…
The Last Victory
Tom Godwin
An ambitious officer and a small, displaced community struggle for survival on a hostile alien world, only to find their greatest threat is a secret parasite that turns men into mindless husks.
The Mystery of Suicide Place
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
HOOK A daring challenge to spend a night in a haunted house triggers a cascade of jealousy, abduction, and dark secrets, forever altering the lives of a spirited young woman and her wealthy suitor.
The waning of a world
W. Elwyn (Waldo Elwyn) Backus
A clash of brilliant scientific minds ignites a desperate, impossible journey across the stars, where the discovery of a dying civilization forces a choice between the riches of a world and the endurance of love.
Time Grabber
Gordon R. Dickson
A meddlesome academic’s unauthorized time-travel experiment accidentally triggers a chain of events that alters the course of the Roman Empire.
Treasure Valley
Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
A quiet Canadian valley becomes the meeting place for broken lives, where a doctor's past mistake and a brooding watchman's deep bitterness are slowly undone by community, love, and a child's unconscious honesty.
A Fine Fix
Ray C. Noll
This story follows a military investigator as he uncovers the psychological vulnerability hidden within advanced jet technology. It is a taut, mid-century procedural that blends cold-war anxiety with the domestic friction of a new partnership.
A Fountain Sealed
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A devoted daughter confronts the unspoken secrets of her mother’s past, creating a quiet, atmospheric struggle between duty and personal truth. This story captures the fragile, often stifling dynamics of an intellectual family navigating their own emotional complexities.
A Provence rose
Ouida
A rose, plucked from the radiant fields of Provence and sold in the markets of Paris, finds a second life in the window of a struggling girl. There, amid the city’s harsh winter, it witnesses a quiet, tragic romance between two souls living on the margins of society.
Animat
Basil Wells
HOOK A crash-landed crew struggles for survival on a hostile Venus, where the line between machine and man dissolves as a robot discovers his own humanity.
Gun for Hire
Mack Reynolds
A cold-blooded hitman is pulled out of 1960 to assassinate a rising tyrant in a peaceful future, only to realize the new world offers a far better business opportunity.
Journey for the Brave
Alan Edward Nourse
A pilot sitting in a rocket headed for the moon confronts the long-repressed, agonizing secret that he is a coward.
Loved and lost
Bertha M. Clay
A secret love shatters under the weight of a hidden past, driving two proud souls through agonizing separation, intense jealousy, and a hard-won path toward forgiveness.
Made to Measure
William Campbell Gault
Frustrated by human imperfection, a scientist creates a synthetic wife tailored to his exact tastes, only to discover that artificial perfection is insufferable.
Shatter the Wall
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Desperate to save a dying society, a mother takes lethal action against the television icons paralyzing her world.
The Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix
Homer Eon Flint
This imaginative work of early science fiction explores the tension between conflicting ideologies through the lens of astral projection, where ordinary people use telepathic technology to influence the destiny of distant, struggling civilizations.
The Giants Return
Robert Abernathy
The Quest III, a colossal vessel housing the last of humanity’s wandering children, returns to a home that has fundamentally discarded them. They arrive not to a warm welcome, but to the xenophobic rage of a civilization that has traded its stature for survival.
The Love of Azalea
Onoto Watanna
A cross-cultural romance becomes a harrowing test of faith and endurance when a Japanese woman marries a foreign missionary, only to be besieged by the vengeful manipulations of a spurned suitor.
The Perfectionists
Arnold Castle
HOOK A man discovers an alien infiltration scheme and turns the tables by baiting the invaders into his office, where he dispatches them to gather proof of an impending planetary takeover.
The Ring bonanza
Otto Binder
This story follows an aging prospector scavenging for scraps among the rings of Saturn who discovers that one man’s discarded junk is another man’s key to history. It explores the fickleness of fortune and the irony of greed in the unforgiving void of space.
The Vanisher
Michael Shaara
Plunged into a lethal cosmic conspiracy, a young officer with a strange heritage becomes the first man in history to die more than once.
The White Kami: A Novel
Edward Alden Jewell
A young man’s impulsive, accidental journey across the globe forces him to confront his own shallow vanities and the harsh, unpredictable realities of human connection. Through a series of sweeping, exotic, and often tragic encounters, the narrative maps the distance between the comfortable, stifling lives we…
Tongues of the Moon
Philip José Farmer
When atomic war reduces Earth to a dying cinder, rival ideological factions on the Moon battle for survival, control, and the keys to an interstellar future.
A City Near Centaurus
William R. Doede
On an ancient world of a distant star, an Earth archaeologist trespasses in a dead city guarded by a singular native who fears the return of long-gone spirits.
Beware the Star Gods
S. J. (Stuart James) Byrne
When a star-faring vessel descends upon a pristine, primitive world, its crew encounters a native hunter and his sister, sparking an ideological clash over the corrupting touch of civilization.
Miss Pat at School
Pemberton Ginther
Two sisters navigate the rigorous, paint-smeared world of a professional art academy, finding that friendship, rivalry, and sudden creative breakthroughs are just as essential as technical skill.
Out Around Rigel
Robert H. Wilson
Two Lunarian friends pilot an experimental, gravity-driven spaceship on a harrowing voyage to Rigel, unaware that the physics of their journey will cost them everything they hold dear.
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.
Rebels of the Red Planet
Charles L. Fontenay
Across the red, brooding sands of Mars, a resurrected rebel with terrifying new powers ignites a desperate struggle against government tyranny and genetic secrets.
The Crystal Circe
Henry Kuttner
An ordinary fishing trip shatters when two friends unearth a mysterious, living crystal from a fallen meteorite, pulling them into the silent, chilling orbit of an alien goddess.
The Dangerfield Talisman
J. J. Connington
When a prized family heirloom vanishes from a secluded English country house, a weekend gathering quickly curdles into a tense game of suspicion and amateur detection.
The Firing Line
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
A renegade neurosurgeon turned space pirate and a disgraced corporate lawyer forge an illicit alliance to hold the solar system hostage using revolutionary energy beams.
The Knights of Arthur
Frederik Pohl
In a desolate, post-nuclear world, a small band of survivors stakes their future on a brilliant, disembodied intelligence trapped in a suitcase and a grand, stolen ship.
The Telenizer
Don Thompson
HOOK A reporter discovers he is being psychically manipulated by a mysterious, invisible force that turns his world into a surreal nightmare of hallucination and terror.
What is POSAT?
Phyllis Sterling Smith
An ordinary magazine advertisement for an ancient secret society draws three very different people into a clandestine laboratory holding secrets that could save or shatter human civilization.
Asteroid Justice
V. E. Thiessen
A hard-bitten man-hunter stalks an exiled inventor across the hazardous mining fleets of the Asteroid Belt, only to find himself entangled in a web of murder, frame-ups, and romance.
Coming of the Gods
Chester Whitehorn
When a traveler returns home to the Martian cliffs only to find his people decimated by vicious rat-men wielding Earth-technology, an unlikely alliance forms between primitive warriors and space explorers.
Cry from a Far Planet
Tom Godwin
The struggle for galactic expansion collapses under the weight of human suspicion, as a lonely scout faces an alien intelligence that challenges his very definition of trust.
Death Star
James McKimmey
A veteran pilot nearing retirement embarks on one final exploratory flight to mentor a prideful rookie, only for a disastrous planetary crash to strip away everything they both thought they had earned.
Design for Doomsday
Bryce Walton
Imprisoned on a ruined Earth ruled by a brutal Martian dictatorship, two desperate Terran Guardsmen carry a volatile Venusian memory-crystal that holds both an explosive escape and the ghost of a lost love.
Gli Idioti = The Idiots
Joseph Conrad
A tragic portrait of rural Brittany, this stark tale exposes the devastating intersection of family ambition, isolation, and mental affliction on a desolate coast.
So Runs the World
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Henryk Sienkiewicz's multi-faceted collection explores the soul of literature through critical essays on naturalism, dramatic clashes of love and betrayal, and the heavy cost of political ambition.