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Novels — page 31
2,094 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 31 of 44.
The Chasers
Daniel F. Galouye
When a disabled spaceship crash-lands on an unfamiliar trinary world, its crew encounters an eccentric human society obsessed with relentless, child-like games and perpetual chases.
The Inglises
Margaret M. (Margaret Murray) Robertson
HOOK This story traces the quiet fortitude of a widowed mother and her children as they navigate poverty, loss, and the demanding path of faith in a stern, beautiful landscape.
The Old Room
Carl Ewald
The weight of tradition and the ache of unbridgeable distances define a marriage haunted by the ghosts of expectation. This is a study of a house where the past is a living inhabitant and the present is a struggle for breath.
The Sons of Japheth
Richard Wilson
Following the total annihilation of Earth in a final, apocalyptic war, a lone pilot and a scientist attempt to rewrite history. They seek to erase humanity’s destructive legacy by traveling back to the dawn of the post-Flood era.
The Three Stages of Clarinda Thorbald
William T. Hamilton
This is a somber, intimate portrait of a woman’s psychological undoing and eventual reclamation of self. It charts the disillusionment of a sheltered bride who finds her romantic ideals systematically dismantled by her husband’s cold, materialistic world.
Blind Play
Chandler Davis
A desperate man drifts through the void, betting his life on a solitary, selfish gamble. He fails to realize that survival in space is not a solo act, but a collective endeavor.
Bridge Crossing
Dave Dryfoos
HOOK In a ruined, fog-choked San Francisco, a young man raised by emotionless machines struggles to understand his own humanity. He must decide whether to destroy the human girl who has arrived to reveal his true origins.
Crisis!
C. M. (Cyril M.) Kornbluth
Diplomatic posturing threatens to ignite an interplanetary war, forcing two clever Earth envoys to weaponize bureaucratic absurdity to keep the peace. Only a chaotic barrage of nonsensical communication can stop the impending destruction of the solar system.
Dr. Adriaan
Louis Couperus
A family gathered under one roof attempts to patch over its deepest wounds, only to discover that healing requires facing the long shadow of its own fragile nature.
His Hour
Elinor Glyn
An English widow resting before the Sphinx is told by the ancient monument to throw off her bloodless propriety; she does, falling into the orbit of a dangerous, magnetic Russian prince.
Invasion
Murray Leinster
HOOK A lonely mountain peak becomes the epicenter of a global crisis when a mysterious, impenetrable dome of force traps a massive air fleet, threatening the survival of an entire civilization.
Luna Benamor
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
These stories capture the intersection of ancient prejudice and modern instability, where rigid traditions collide with the fragile, flickering lives of individuals trapped by their own histories.
Rosemary in Search of a Father
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
A lonely American expatriate in Monte Carlo finds his life transformed when a young girl mistakes him for the father she has only ever imagined.
Signs & Wonders
J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
This collection of stories explores the thin, trembling membrane between the ordinary world and the vast, unexplained forces that haunt human consciousness.
Spacemen lost
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
The vast silence of interstellar space becomes a desperate stage for a rescue mission when a lifeship disappears into the void, turning an ordinary transit into a race against time, cold, and uncertainty.
The Master-Knot of Human Fate
Ellis Meredith
An unexpected cataclysm leaves a man and a woman as the sole survivors of their world, forcing them to confront the isolation of existence and the nature of human connection.
The Poors
Harry Lorayne
A visiting diplomat from another planet discovers that humanity’s social hierarchy is determined entirely by the outcome of televised game shows. He learns that in this society, wealth and poverty are not conditions of birth, but labels earned or lost under the glaring lights of a television studio.
The Sling and the Stone
Michael Shaara
Pyotr Diavilev, a brilliant but cowed scientist, finds himself drafted into a terrifying Soviet plot to weaponize a natural satellite. He must decide whether to serve his captors or orchestrate a final, desperate act of defiance.
Unwelcome Tenant
Roger D. Aycock
The first human to travel deep into space discovers a terrifying truth about humanity. As he breaks free from the invisible shackles of his mind, he realizes that liberation is far more precarious than he imagined.
Welcome to Paradise
Allyn Donnelson
A simple factory worker accidentally triggers a secret military teleportation device, uncovering a miraculous medical discovery on a hidden satellite that challenges the government’s obsession with total secrecy.
A Daughter of Witches: A Romance
Joanna E. (Joanna Ellen) Wood
A sensitive, idealistic minister finds his life and faith undone when he marries into a family haunted by deep-seated, ancestral superstitions.
A Star for a Night: A Story of Stage Life
Elsie Janis
This narrative captures the frantic, glittering, and often precarious world of early 20th-century New York theater, where young women arrive with big dreams and find their paths paved by the whims of wealthy, possessive "angels." It is a candid look at the intersection of ambition, art, and the transactional nature…
Backlash
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
This story of a quiet, domestic takeover by alien "servants" serves as a cold reminder that the most dangerous traps are those we set for ourselves.
Bébée
Ouida
A child found drifting among water-lilies grows into a creature as pure as her garden, only to discover how cruelly the world treats such devotion.
By the Good Sainte Anne: A Story of Modern Quebec
Anna Chapin Ray
A young American woman finds herself unexpectedly at the heart of a romantic rivalry in historic Quebec. Amidst the shifting seasons of the city, she must navigate the affections of two very different men.
Driven to bay, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Florence Marryat
A woman follows her deceitful husband across the sea, only to find he has abandoned his honor and his marriage vows for a new life. As tragedy strikes their vessel, the truth finally comes to light.
Fairyland planet
John Silletto
A manufactured paradise on a desert planet protects children from the harsh realities of Earth, until one brilliant, curious boy begins to question the existence of Santa Claus.
Farmer
Mack Reynolds
Hook A small team of foresters battles the encroaching Sahara, only to find that their greatest enemies are not the desert winds, but human saboteurs determined to see their ambitious reclamation project fail.
Off the Beam
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
A freak accident leaves a spacecraft drifting helplessly at extreme acceleration into the outer reaches of the solar system. The crew must combine desperate ingenuity with amateur physics to signal for their own rescue.
Outcast of the Stars
Robert Silverberg
A man wrongly accused of murder finds himself exiled to Earth, only to discover his true tormentor is hiding in plain sight among a secret society of outcasts. This tense science fiction mystery follows a prisoner’s desperate attempt to clear his name while navigating a planet he was never meant to inhabit.
Settling Day
Nat Gould
A quiet station owner and his young son face betrayal and violence in the rugged Australian bush, where justice is found not in the courts, but in the saddle and the ultimate settling of scores.
The frantic master
Pulleyne, Douglas, Mrs.
A haunting meditation on the burdens of love and the struggle for personal autonomy, this narrative traces two souls attempting to transcend the conventional social constraints of their era.
The Pond
Carl Ewald
Life in a quiet corner of the natural world is a precarious, exhausting, and often brutal affair. Through the eyes of a pair of nesting reed-warblers, the daily struggle for survival reveals a reality far removed from human sentimentality.
The Velvet Glove
Harry Harrison
In a future where the law acknowledges equality but society remains deeply prejudiced, a displaced robot must navigate a web of exploitation and crime to survive. This tense, inventive narrative explores the intersection of systemic bias, labor, and underground resistance through the eyes of a machine struggling…
Three Spacemen Left to Die!
R. R. (Russell Robert) Winterbotham
Two of the last human beings in the universe race toward a distant sanctuary, carrying a lethal, spark-emitting plague that threatens to consume any world they touch. Their final journey becomes a desperate, claustrophobic struggle between the instinct to survive and the moral obligation to protect the future of…
Tomorrow the World!
Robert W. Krepps
A pulp-fiction writer wakes in a museum to discover he is not a man, but the dormant legacy of a more ancient, predatory species. He declares war on humanity, reclaiming a primal birthright he believes has been hidden in human blood for eons.
Under Sealed Orders
H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
HOOK A young man, wrongly accused of a crime and struggling against social prejudice, finds his destiny intertwined with a mysterious project at a powerful waterfall.
A sham princess
Eglanton Thorne
HOOK A young boy’s fierce, protective love for his sister is tested when she is swept away from their life of squalor into a world of wealth and temptation, leading to a desperate struggle for her soul.
Belchamber
Howard Overing Sturgis
A quiet, introspective man struggles to protect his ancestral home from the reckless appetites of his shallow, grasping social circle. This is a story of personal integrity sacrificed for the preservation of a hollow legacy.
Giannella
Fraser, Hugh, Mrs.
HOOK In the shadow of Rome’s ancient ruins, an orphaned girl and her fierce, protective housekeeper navigate a web of secrets woven by a miserly scholar.
Invader From Infinity
George A. Whittington
A lone Earth vessel faces a technologically superior alien sphere in a desperate, last-ditch gamble to save the Solar System from annihilation.
Mixed Pickles
Evelyn Raymond
A house full of conflicting personalities, a fretful invalid, and a group of irrepressible children collide in a domestic drama of reform and reconciliation.
Moon of Danger
Albert dePina
HOOK A lone patrol pilot races to intercept a desperate, plague-stricken Martian armada, only to discover that the true threat is a hidden, cold-blooded conspiracy waiting in the shadows of space.
Point of Departure
Vaughan Shelton
This story explores the intersection of ancient, forgotten technology and modern corporate ambition, following a research manager who finds himself unwittingly facilitating a dangerous, unauthorized experiment. As a high-stakes investigation unfolds in a boardroom, a narrative of scientific hubris and personal…
Sargasso of the Stars
Frederic Arnold Kummer
Steve Haller pursues a desperate rescue mission into the heart of a cosmic trap, a graveyard of ships where the laws of physics and humanity have both crumbled into ruin.
Sea Mew Abbey
Florence Warden
A young woman arrives at her ancestral home to find it a crumbling, haunted shell, only to discover her father is entangled in a violent smuggling ring.
Sordman the Protector
Tom Purdom
A young man blessed with world-changing psychic powers struggles to save a murderer from a lynch mob while fighting to keep his own humanity intact.
The Alchemist's Secret
Isabel Cecilia Williams
This collection of interconnected tales explores the quiet dignity of the marginalized and the profound, often sudden, interventions of faith in lives defined by hardship. It serves as a gentle, earnest meditation on human fallibility and the possibility of spiritual renewal.