Free summaries
Novels — page 30
2,094 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 30 of 44.
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.
Spillthrough
Daniel F. Galouye
A lone pilot fights to survive the mechanical death-throes of his ship while a ruthless scavenger stalks him, waiting for the inevitable moment he falls out of hyperspace.
The Lighted Match
Charles Neville Buck
An obscure European throne, a quiet American suitor, and a princess caught between statecraft and her own heart set the stage for an old-world romance of intrigue, masquerade, and sudden violence.
The Man Outside
Evelyn E. Smith
When descendants from a war-torn future travel back in time to protect their young ancestor from an idealist assassin, they inadvertently seal their own vanishing fate.
The Mannion Court-Martial
Randall Garrett
Accused of a violent android mutiny and facing the total erasure of his memories, a devoted space officer struggles against a rigged military trial to reclaim his stolen identity.
The Masked World
Jack Williamson
A seven-man survey crew lands on a hostile, alien planet wearing a terrifying mask of jungle and monstrous genes, only to discover a chilling message encoded inside the very DNA of its mutant flora.
The Nothing Equation
Tom Godwin
The vast, uncaring void of intergalactic space waits patiently for a single, hairline fracture to end a human life. This chilling examination of isolation explores how the terror of the unknown can dismantle a rational mind.
Where the Atlantic meets the land
H. Caldwell Lipsett
Along the rugged, windswept shores of nineteenth-century Donegal, ordinary lives grapple with quiet heartbreaks, rural rivalries, and the heavy weight of isolation.
A Happy Boy
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
A bright child's laughter opens a lifelong journey through rural Norway, where love must weather poverty, pride, and the heavy weight of social divides before finding its peace.
B-12's Moon Glow
Charles A. Stearns
Banished to a desolate Martian moon, an obsolescent robot moonshiner fights to protect his community from corporate scrap-heaps using illicit chemistry and clever blackmail.
Brainchild
Henry Slesar
Awakening in the body of a twelve-year-old boy after returning from deep space, a thirty-year-old astronaut must hunt down the brilliant prodigy who stole his life.
Bunzo Farewell
Charles V. De Vet
HOOK A persistent lawman follows a wanted criminal to the edge of the galaxy, only to discover that the alien sanctuary his quarry has found is a grotesque trap of biological horror.
Marshal of Sundown
Jackson Gregory
HOOK A drifter rides into a town defined by violence and greed, discovering a web of deception that demands he take a stand for the vulnerable.
Meleager
Herbert M. (Herbert Millingchamp) Vaughan
HOOK A man is abducted from Earth to become the sovereign of a distant planet, only to find that his royal status is a gilded cage maintained by a secretive, manipulative priesthood.
Mirage for Planet X
Stanley Mullen
A desperate pursuit for a fugitive reaches a fever pitch across the hostile, mirage-filled landscapes of a distant moon. In this high-stakes hunt, the hunter and the hunted are bound by more than just a criminal charge.
Pink Gods and Blue Demons
Cynthia Stockley
Amid the dusty heat of a South African diamond town, a young and vain married woman is drawn into a dangerous web of temptation, glittering jewels, and emotional manipulation.
Requiem
Edmond Hamilton
A cynical starship captain reluctantly oversees a publicity-hungry media expedition to the cradle of humanity, only to find himself guarding the planet’s final, lonely moments against a tide of professional sentimentality.