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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 104 of 711.
History of the Conquest of Mexico
William Hickling Prescott
A towering empire collides with an unyielding expedition across the mountains and causeways of Anahuac, forever altering the course of two hemispheres.
Novelas Cortas
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
A ragged gypsy on a donkey rides into a governor's palace, setting in motion a collection of dramatic tales of Spanish history, honor, war, and local intrigue.
Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic
Benedetto Croce
Art is not a decorative luxury or an intellectual puzzle, but human consciousness giving internal life an external form. In this foundational text, intuition and expression merge into a single, unified act that redefines both creative art and everyday human language.
The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
A brilliant mind races against failing health, sending warm, witty, and candid letters from Scottish mists to remote Pacific islands. It captures a life lived with relentless creative drive despite constant physical fragility.
On the magnet, magnetick bodies also, and on the great magnet the earth: a new physiology, demonstrated by many arguments & experiments
Silvanus P. (Silvanus Phillips) Thompson
A vast global body acts as a single primary magnet, its invisible forces drawing iron and guiding compasses across oceans to define the natural boundaries of the earth.
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Songling Pu
Uncanny phenomena break through everyday routine, revealing how human desire, moral frailty, and hidden spiritual debts constantly reshape reality.
The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
A gentle observer wanders through depopulated hamlets, bustling taverns, and ruined pastures, recording how human affection withstands the quiet losses of time. His verse turns local heartbreaks and personal follies into lasting reflections on human nature.
The Power of Darkness
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A dark, relentless descent into moral ruin shows how a single uncorrected misstep can entangle an entire village in deception, murder, and soul-crushing guilt.
The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
Kersey Graves
Long before modern comparative religion gained a foothold, writers sought to expose how ancient myths shaped Christian theology.
Moral Science
Alexander Bain
Human morality is neither an innate mystical intuition nor an arbitrary set of rules, but a practical social institution forged to preserve human life and advance public well-being.
The Life of Cardinal Wolsey
George Cavendish
A towering minister of state falls from royal favor to absolute ruin, witnessed by a loyal servant who writes to rescue his master's memory from slander.
Welsh Folk-Lore: a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales
Elias Owen
A parish priest walks the lonely mountain roads of nineteenth-century North Wales, gathering fairy tales, death omens, and phantom hounds from the lips of elderly villagers before their ancient lore fades forever.
Speeches: Literary and Social
Charles Dickens
Public addresses and banquet toasts transform the celebrated novelist into a relentless advocate for public health, popular education, and charitable care across Victorian Britain and America.
Steep Trails
John Muir
A naturalist's journey through the untamed West, where mountains whisper ancient secrets and rivers carve stories into the earth.
The Memoirs of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
A grand cultural eye witnesses France hurtle through revolutions, monarchies, and sieges, capturing the intimate wreckage and public grandeur of a century in turmoil.
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave
George Augustus Sala
A neglected boy flees a brutal schoolmaster, falls in with forest outlaws, and finds himself facing the gallows before his twelfth birthday.
Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote
Unknown
A sweeping late-nineteenth-century omnibus captures the birth and expansion of a young nation's literary voice through biographical sketches, portraits, and anthologized writings. It celebrates the poets, novelists, humorists, and orators who defined American culture.
On the Future of our Educational Institutions
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
True culture cannot survive when learning is diluted for the masses or reduced to state utility. A night-time encounter on a hill overlooking the Rhine reveals how modern institutions trade deep wisdom for superficial specialization.
The Diary of a Nobody
George Grossmith
Charles Pooter is a middle-class clerk living in a modest London suburb who believes his daily observations deserve a place in history.
Essays in Zen Buddhism
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
Beyond mere philosophy or quiet meditation lies an immediate, transformative experience of truth that shatters conceptual dualism and awakens the mind to its own original nature.
Figures of speech
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Dobie Dalton is a self-proclaimed genius, a world-class detective, and an aspiring actor who finds himself perpetually thwarted by the simple reality that he is, in fact, none of these things. Through a series of increasingly frantic letters to his distant friend Hank, Dobie chronicles his attempts to reclaim his…
The Bride of Lammermoor
Walter Scott
A dark Scottish valley frames a tragic feud between an impoverished heir and the powerful family who seized his ancestral land.
The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry
Joseph Fort Newton
Ancient symbols and operational traditions unite to reveal how humanity continuously rebuilds its spiritual house through brotherhood, moral rectitude, and an unwavering faith in life after death.
The History of England, from the Accession of James II
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
A nation risks losing its constitutional liberties to absolute rule, only for an unstable balance of political ambition, religious zeal, and judicial overreach to precipitate a total transformation of its government.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde, from the Shorthand Reports
Charles Grolleau
A high-stakes libel suit collapses into a devastating criminal trial, exposing the hidden subcultures and bitter enmities of Victorian London.
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6
François Guizot
The sun never sets on Versailles without someone paying for the light, yet even absolute kings must eventually hand their kingdom over to children, ministers, and mobs.
The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians (Vol. 1 of 6)
Charles Rollin
A sweeping survey of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds, this work balances meticulous geographical reporting, religious analysis, and military chronicle to chart how early civilizations rose, governed, and ultimately fell.
A master of craft
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A slippery river captain fakes his own death to dodge complicated engagements, only to discover that the women and crew he left behind are far more adept at navigating life's currents than he ever anticipated.
Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery
Filson Young
Driven by an absolute faith in land across the dark ocean, a humble mariner secures royal backing, survives perilous voyages into the unknown, and dies locked in a bitter struggle to claim his promised reward.
Eugenie Grandet
Honoré de Balzac
In a dreary house in Saumur, a miser’s devotion to gold crushes the spirits of those around him, turning his innocent daughter's quiet devotion into a life of tragic, solitary grace.
Henry D. Thoreau
F. B. (Franklin Benjamin) Sanborn
A quiet, unyielding life takes root in the Massachusetts woods, measuring the universe not by world travel, but by the slow growth of local grapes and the deep silence of Walden Pond.
Major Barbara
Bernard Shaw
Poverty starves the human soul, but can the profits of total destruction purchase its true salvation?
Needlework As Art
Alford, Marianne Margaret Compton Cust, Viscountess
A scholarly yet deeply felt vindication of textile needlework, arguing that stitchery is not mere domestic craft but a vital, fine art carrying human history.
Six Years in the Prisons of England
Unknown
To enter the nineteenth-century British penal system was to step into a hidden, highly calculated machine designed to strip a man of his independence. This extraordinary, candid memoir reveals the inner workings of English prisons through the eyes of an educated insider who observed every detail of his six-year…
The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family
William Makepeace Thackeray
A warm-hearted Indian Army veteran returns to England to secure his artist son’s happiness, only to see their fortunes devoured by aristocratic snobbery and financial ruin.
A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes
Charles Elmé Francatelli
A manual of practical culinary thrift, showing how low-cost ingredients, proper technique, and thoughtful preparation transform modest domestic budgets into nourishing, comforting meals.
Cathedrals of Spain
John A. (John Allyne) Gade
Across dusty Castilian plains and sun-drenched Andalusian valleys, Spain’s great stone sanctuaries rise as physical monuments to a nation's warring, devout, and complex soul.
Hume: (English Men of Letters Series)
Thomas Henry Huxley
Stripping away philosophical pretension, this work grounds human knowledge, morals, and social order firmly in natural instinct, habit, and physical experience.
Life of Charles Dickens
Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas), Sir
A child of the London slums and debtors' prisons rises to become the undisputed monarch of Victorian literature through boundless energy, keen observation, and an unmatched capacity for human empathy.
Nil Darpan
Dinabandhu Mitra
When a powerful foreign industry turns peaceful peasant farmers into impoverished serfs, one courageous family risks everything to stand between their community and total ruin.
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 01: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English
Unknown
A vast, multi-form showcase of German literary genius traces the evolution of human striving, moral duty, and artistic transformation across lyric poetry, classic narrative, and philosophical drama.
Key to palmistry
Louis Williams
The lines of the palm and the shape of the fingers reveal the inner workings of the human mind, mapping thought, action, and destiny directly onto the flesh.
The Conjure Woman
Charles W. (Charles Waddell) Chesnutt
An enslaved storyteller uses tales of hoodoo and transformation to quietly outwit a Northern white landowner seeking to buy up post-Civil War North Carolina property.
At the Earth's Core
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A reckless trip through the crust of the earth lands two men in a primeval subterranean world of reptilian overlords and savage tribes.
Short stories from Life: The 81 prize stories in "Life's" Shortest Story Contest
Unknown
Desperate lovers, scheming dye merchants, weary soldiers, and silver-tongued gamblers cross paths in a collection where every word must earn its keep.
Spontaneous Activity in Education
Maria Montessori
A radical call to free the human spirit by reshaping the way we educate children, this volume argues that true intellectual and moral growth begins with self-directed activity.
The Shakespeare Story-Book
William Shakespeare
Two lovers run into a dark wood to escape a harsh father, unaware that fairies and actors are waiting to twist their lives into sweet, hilarious chaos.
A Letter Book: Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing
George Saintsbury
A private letter is a delicate, living thing—part conversation, part portrait, and entirely human. This anthology traces how five centuries of writers turned personal correspondence into an enduring art form.