Free summaries
Novels — page 7
1,233 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 7 of 26.
The Man Whom the Trees Loved
Algernon Blackwood
An old forestry officer's soul is slowly drawn into the collective consciousness of the woods, driving a wedge between his quiet life and his terrified wife.
Revolt of the Outworlds
Stephen Marlowe
Deep in the desert under the Martian sand, a dead leader's legacy becomes the weapon in a ruthless plot to destroy Earth.
The Moon of Skulls
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A lone, iron-willed Puritan ventures into a hidden African kingdom to rescue a captive girl, confronting an ancient, blood-drenched civilization ruled by a vampire queen.
Man of Many Minds
E. Everett (Edward Everett) Evans
A young cadet discovers he possesses a secret, volatile power that makes him the last line of defense against an unseen conspiracy threatening the stability of the galaxy.
The Ambassador
Merwin, Sam, Jr.
An alien diplomat arrives on a neurotic, computer-dependent Earth only to discover that the greatest threat to interplanetary peace is the humans' own involuntary, allergy-prone habit of sabotaging their own technology.
Border, Breed Nor Birth
Mack Reynolds
Homer Crawford, a brilliant sociologist and visionary, sheds his identity to become "El Hassan," a mythic revolutionary leader determined to unify a fractured, post-colonial North Africa through sheer force of will and intellect.
The Martian
A. R. (Alec Rowley) Hilliard
A lone traveler from Mars, stranded in a hostile world, discovers that his vast scientific knowledge serves only to trap him in a cage of human greed.
The shadow of the East
E. M. (Edith Maude) Hull
A weary traveler haunted by a secret shame searches the globe for penance, only to find that the past he desperately flees is tethered to the one soul he deems too pure to claim.
The Doctor
Ralph Connor
A rugged physician navigates the harsh frontiers of the Canadian wilderness, wrestling with his own past, the demands of his calling, and a love that transcends the boundaries of life and death.
Mortmain
Arthur Cheney Train
This collection of stories explores the collision of privilege, conscience, and the unexpected burdens of the past. It offers a glimpse into the vanished world of early 20th-century American life, where personal honor and social standing are often defined by a single, irreversible moment.
Six Women
Victoria Cross
This collection of six linked vignettes captures the feverish intensity of life in the East through the eyes of men and women bound by desire, duty, and tragic miscalculation. It is a work of atmospheric, late-Victorian romanticism that explores the volatile intersections of cultural collision and private obsession.
The Lonely Ones
Edward W. Ludwig
The line between noble dreams and madness is thin, and loneliness can push men past it. This story follows six men who cross that line in their desperate search for a meaningful place in the universe.
The Terror Out of Space
Dwight V. Swain
A desperate pilot enters the deadly unknown of space to rescue a woman, only to find himself embroiled in a cosmic conflict between human greed and an alien species that manifests nightmares into reality.
The Wonderful Story of Ravalette
Paschal Beverly Randolph
This 1863 narrative blends occult mystery with the intense, often erratic, personal philosophy of a singular American figure. It serves as a strange, atmospheric bridge between the burgeoning Spiritualist movement and the more structured, ancient traditions of the Rosicrucians.
Back to Billabong
Mary Grant Bruce
Seeking a fresh start after the Great War, two orphaned siblings trade the stifling atmosphere of a London home for the vast, sun-drenched landscapes of the Australian bush. This classic tale of resilience follows their journey from displacement to belonging, finding lasting appeal in its portrait of courage and…
Where I Wasn't Going
Walt Richmond
HOOK When a massive space-station project goes rogue, its crew finds themselves trapped in a political nightmare that threatens to bring the world beneath them to its knees.
A Vendetta of the Desert
W. C. (William Charles) Scully
Driven by a blood feud that spans generations and continents, this story explores the corrosive power of hatred within the harsh landscape of the South African frontier. It is a stark, character-driven examination of how vengeance destroys both the hunter and the hunted.
Corleone: A Tale of Sicily
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A love that defies the violent shadows of a Sicilian blood feud takes root in the hearts of a Roman nobleman and a girl born into a family of outlaws.
Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel
Stinson Jarvis
A portrait of moral decay and social ambition in late 19th-century Toronto, this psychological drama explores the internal fractures of a man who masks a ruthless, manipulative nature behind a facade of refined gentility.
The Headsman
James Fenimore Cooper
A young woman’s love for a man of "inferior" birth and a prince’s search for a lost son converge in the dangerous, craggy heights of the Swiss Alps.
Brigands of the Moon
Ray Cummings
HOOK A high-stakes interplanetary heist unfolds aboard a luxury space-liner, where a navigator and his comrades must outwit ruthless lunar pirates to protect a priceless cargo of rare ore.
Miriam Monfort: A Novel
Catherine A. (Catherine Ann) Warfield
A young heiress finds herself trapped by the cold machinations of a predatory guardian, leading to a desperate flight across land and sea. This gothic-tinged novel explores the struggle for autonomy against those who would trade a woman’s freedom for her inheritance.
Princess Zara
Ross Beeckman
The fate of two strangers, bound by a grand, unseen design, converges in the shadow of the Russian autocracy. This is a tale of political intrigue, forbidden love, and the lethal cost of conviction.
Uller Uprising
H. Beam Piper
A colonial governor finds himself caught in a sudden, planet-wide insurrection when a local population, long dismissed as backward, turns sophisticated weapons against their corporate overseers.
Underground Man
Gabriel de Tarde
The solar fire fades, and humanity must choose between extinction on the surface or a new, claustrophobic existence deep within the earth’s crust. This imaginative work explores the radical transformation of our species when forced into total, subterranean confinement.
Mayflower (Flor de mayo): A Tale of the Valencian Seashore
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
HOOK This rugged tale of the Valencian coast pits the relentless, life-giving ocean against the fragile, often treacherous nature of human desire.
The Torrent (Entre Naranjos)
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The son of a powerful political dynasty finds his carefully scripted life upended by an encounter with a woman who embodies the freedom and passion he only dares to read about in novels.
Master of Life and Death
Robert Silverberg
The weight of seven billion souls presses down on a single desk. To save a suffocating world, one man must become the architect of its most hated necessity.
The luck of San Miguel
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The dusty trails of the Arizona range hide secrets that only a sharp eye can uncover. When the law fails to see the truth, two drifting cowboys arrive to settle the score.
Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century Allegory
W. S. (William Shuler) Harris
A perilous journey along the Broad Highway explores the spiritual dangers of compromise and the seductive deceptions of worldly influence on a professing believer.
Omega, the Man
Lowell Howard Morrow
The last man on a dying Earth clings to his pride and his memories while battling a creature that threatens the final drop of water.
Second stage Lensmen
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
A galaxy-spanning struggle pits the Galactic Patrol against an inscrutable, malevolent enemy. In a war of planetary scales, one man’s telepathic Lens and indomitable will define the future of Civilization.
You Never Know Your Luck
Gilbert Parker
A man’s past in Ireland collides with his present on the Canadian prairie when an unopened letter—and a meddling, spirited woman—force a reckoning with the wife he abandoned years before.
The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon
Josephine Daskam Bacon
A physician observes the fragile, often invisible boundaries between sanity and secret lives, witnessing how the human heart unravels when society’s expectations become an unbearable cage.
A Gamble with Life
Silas K. (Silas Kitto) Hocking
A desperate inventor stakes his future on a risky legal bet, only to find that winning his life's work means nothing if he loses his soul—and the woman he loves.
Voodoo Planet
Andre Norton
A Terran space trader steps into a high-stakes duel of minds on a lush safari world where psychological witchcraft threatens to unravel planetary order.
Such Is Life
Joseph Furphy
A wandering officer on the Australian frontier weaves a web of yarns, misread clues, and bad luck into a grand, comic tapestry of the bush.
The Confession: A Novel
Maksim Gorky
Driven by an unquenchable spiritual hunger, an orphaned peasant wanders through the dark heart of Imperial Russia in search of a true, living God—only to discover that divinity resides not in heaven, but within the collective human soul.
The Devil
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A respectably married estate owner finds himself helplessly consumed by a secret physical obsession with a local peasant woman.
The Golden Woman: A Story of the Montana Hills
Ridgwell Cullum
A cursed orphan flees to the Montana hills, only to find that the tragedy following her might be built on human greed rather than fate.
Captivity
Leonora Eyles
A young Scottish woman marries a weak-willed medical student, enduring his alcoholism across two continents before discovering that self-sacrifice alone cannot save another soul.
Dawn
Adams, H. A., Mrs.
Bound by standard social conventions, restless souls search for spiritual harmony, authentic love, and personal purpose across a landscape of broken marriages and traditional expectations.
Pursuit
Lester Del Rey
A man wakes in terror to find months erased from his memory, pursued by invisible forces through a city that has suddenly become a lethal maze.
All Men are Ghosts
L. P. (Lawrence Pearsall) Jacks
A strange journey through human perception, where the lines between the living, the dead, and the imagined dissolve entirely.
St. Peter's Umbrella: A Novel
Kálmán Mikszáth
A single, forgotten piece of red silk transforms a dusty Hungarian village into a place of miracles while a young lawyer hunts down a lost fortune, only to find something far more valuable.
Cerebrum
Albert Teichner
A single corrupted thought-line exposes the slow decay of humanity’s organic switchboard, severing a couple from society and forcing them into a quiet underground that alone will survive the mind’s final collapse.
North of Fifty-Three
Bertrand W. Sinclair
When a woman is forced out of her quiet life by social hypocrisy and the cold calculations of a city, she finds herself stranded far beyond the reaches of civilization—where survival demands a brutal choice between pride and freedom.
The Summons
A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
A tragedy of duty and devotion, this First World War novel maps how personal ambition and national service collide across continents and hearts.