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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 180 of 714.

The Royal Book of Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
The Scarecrow’s search for his family origins leads him to a distant, magical realm where he is mistaken for a long-lost royal figure. Alongside Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, he navigates a series of strange encounters in a quest to return home.

The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A secluded estate holds a desperate secret, drawing a young man into a web of political scandal, forbidden romance, and the encroaching shadows of a ruined family’s past.

Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Lester Pearson
A vibrant portrait of a leader who lived by the doctrine of the "strenuous life," constantly testing his mettle through public service, exploration, and an unyielding commitment to his country.

Tyburn Tree: Its History and Annals
Alfred Marks
Tyburn Tree is the definitive chronicle of London’s most infamous place of execution, tracing the brutal evolution of British capital punishment from its medieval origins to the final days of the gallows.

Ways of Nature
John Burroughs
Science and sentiment collide as a seasoned naturalist dismantles the modern tendency to project human intellect and morality onto the wild behavior of birds and beasts.

American Indians
Frederick Starr
This survey of North American Indigenous life provides a panoramic window into the diverse customs, histories, and social structures of tribes across the continent. It serves as a foundational record of cultural practices that were rapidly shifting at the turn of the twentieth century.

Dream Life and Real Life: A Little African Story
Olive Schreiner
The ache of childhood dreams, the fierce pride of youth, and the quiet, heavy resolve of maturity collide in these portraits of women standing at the precipice of their own lives.

Glimpses of Three Coasts
Helen Hunt Jackson
This collection of travel essays captures the vanishing traditions and natural splendor of the late nineteenth century, spanning from the sun-drenched missions of California to the rugged, mist-covered fjords of Norway.

Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament
Eberhard Nestle
The New Testament was not written in a vacuum, but preserved through centuries of human hands, ink, and parchment, leaving behind a complex puzzle for those who seek the original text.

Landmarks in Russian literature
Maurice Baring
This literary survey serves as a vital bridge for early 20th-century readers to understand the Russian soul through its most profound artistic voices.

Overtones, a book of temperaments
James Huneker
A collection of critical portraits, this book explores the intersection of creative temperaments, dissecting the lives and works of composers and writers with a keen, searching intelligence.

Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy
Charles W. (Charles Wendell) David
The ill-fated life of a Norman duke unfolds through his failed crusades, lost inheritance, and eventual descent into decades of lonely imprisonment.

Stories and folk-lore of West Cornwall. Third Series
William Bottrell
The vanishing echoes of a rugged, ancient landscape find their final preservation in this collection of legends, where the line between the living and the spectral is drawn with a firm, traditional hand.

The Adventures of Gerard
Arthur Conan Doyle
The swaggering, irrepressible Brigadier Etienne Gerard recounts his most perilous exploits across the Napoleonic battlefields. These spirited tales capture the bravado of a soldier who believes his own myth as fervently as he serves his Emperor.

The Battle of Blenheim
Hilaire Belloc
The Duke of Marlborough’s brilliant, high-stakes march across Europe culminates in one of the most decisive tactical struggles of the eighteenth century. This account examines the mechanics of war through the lens of a singular, transformative triumph.

The Beaux-Stratagem
George Farquhar
Two desperate gentlemen travel to the countryside to hunt for wealthy heiresses, only to discover that the most rewarding conquests are those of the heart and the spirit.

The Catacombs of Rome, and Their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity
W. H. (William Henry) Withrow
Beneath the bustling streets of Rome lies a silent, subterranean world of ancient brick and stone, where the first followers of a new faith carved their history into the very earth itself.

The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert
Various
A courtroom transcript serves as the definitive battlefield for a singular work of literature, where legal arguments collide with artistic intent in a high-stakes struggle over the boundaries of public morality. This record captures the precise moment when the state attempted to silence a masterpiece, offering a…

The story of Hungary
Ármin Vámbéry
This volume traces the evolution of a nation from its origins as nomadic tribes on the Central Asian steppes to its emergence as a distinct, defiant European power. It offers a sweeping chronicle of survival against external empires and internal fracture.

The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 01 (of 32)
John Wesley
This volume collects the foundational sermons of an eighteenth-century English clergyman whose radical insistence on personal experience and social holiness sparked a global religious movement. It provides a primary-source window into a transformative era of theological thought.

Trent's Last Case
E. C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
A brilliant investigator abandons his profession after a single, humbling case proves that even the sharpest intellect can be blind to the truth hidden in plain sight.

War Medals and Their History
William Augustus Steward
This guide examines the tangible history of British military service, transforming cold, metallic decorations into intimate windows into the lives and sacrifices of those who served.

A History of English Prose Fiction
Bayard Tuckerman
Tracing the evolution of English fiction from chivalric tales to the modern novel, this work examines how literature reflects the changing social characteristics of the English-speaking world.

Abandoned
Jules Verne
Five men and a dog are cast away on an uncharted Pacific island, where they must rely on their ingenuity to master the wilderness. This tale of survival transforms a desolate rock into a thriving, self-sustaining society.

Camps and Trails in China: A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China
Roy Chapman Andrews
Amidst the political tremors of a crumbling empire, a small team of naturalists journeys into the remote, mountainous frontier of China to document the hidden life of its wild, vanishing forests.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series
Lafcadio Hearn
A refined observer wanders through the vanishing feudal landscapes and quiet domestic interiors of late nineteenth-century Japan, capturing the fleeting spirit of a culture standing at the threshold of modernity.

Historic Inventions
Rupert Sargent Holland
Human ingenuity acts as the primary architect of modern progress, with history’s most significant leaps forward often arriving through the persistent, iterative work of a single, focused mind.
Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists: Ibsen, Strindberg, Becque, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hervieu, Gorky, Duse and D'Annunzio, Maeterlinck and Bernard Shaw
James Huneker
The stage is a mirror held up to the human soul, revealing the turbulent, often unspoken struggles of the modern individual. This collection of essays serves as a rigorous, passionate guide to the playwrights who reshaped the landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Money (L'Argent)
Émile Zola
A brilliant, predatory financier builds a financial empire on dreams and deception, only to watch his house of cards collapse as the Bourse transforms from a theater of triumph into a graveyard of fortunes.

The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West
Washington Irving
A U.S. Army captain trades his uniform for the wild life of a mountain trapper, navigating the perilous, vast, and untamed American West during the height of the fur trade.

The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus: Being Parts of the History of Herodotus, Edited for Boys and Girls
Herodotus
This vibrant selection of ancient history captures the rise and fall of empires, framing the legendary struggles between East and West through the eyes of a master storyteller.

The Candy Maker's Guide: A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling
Fletcher Manufacturing Company
This practical guide offers a window into the late 19th-century workshop, detailing the precise methods, tools, and industrial ingredients required to master the art of professional sugar boiling and confectionery.

The Girls and I: A Veracious History
Mrs. Molesworth
A young boy navigating the complexities of a large family finds his life transformed by a lost piece of jewelry and the sudden, perilous illness of his youngest sister.

The Lani People
Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone
A young veterinarian takes a job on a distant, isolated planet, only to discover that the "livestock" he has been hired to manage are actually a subjugated, forgotten branch of humanity.

The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods from Maine to California
William B. Laughead
The ultimate American giant, this legendary woodsman shapes the continent with his axe, his wits, and a blue ox of impossible proportions. He is the mythic embodiment of the frontier, where every hardship is met with an even taller tale.

The master mind of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A soldier from Earth finds himself an unwilling apprentice to a mad surgeon on Mars, where brains and bodies are swapped like spare parts in a grotesque, high-stakes game of survival.

The Spirit Lake Massacre
Thomas Teakle
The Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857 stands as a harrowing turning point in the settlement of the American frontier, forever altering the landscape of Iowa and the lives of those caught in the collision of cultures.

Webster & Tourneur
John Webster
The stage is a dark mirror for the corruption of the human soul, where brilliance and depravity walk hand in hand. These plays define a world where ambition, lust, and vengeance consume all they touch.

Blackthorn Farm
Arthur Applin
A young man faces ruin and a false conviction, setting off a desperate scramble for redemption across the wild moors of Dartmoor and the distant jungles of the Far East.

Caesar: A Sketch
James Anthony Froude
This historical study re-examines the life and legacy of a defining Roman figure, stripping away centuries of moralizing to reveal a pragmatic reformer navigating a collapsing republic. It is a portrait of power and its inevitable, violent costs.

Cecilia
Fanny Burney
An orphan heiress navigating the traps of London high society must reconcile the heavy demands of her inheritance with the unpredictable stirrings of her own heart. This expansive novel charts a young woman’s struggle to maintain her integrity while surrounded by spendthrifts, social climbers, and the stifling…

Finished
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
A masterful weaver of African adventure brings a long-gestating saga to its harrowing conclusion, tracing the downfall of a kingdom through the eyes of a legendary hunter. This tale of revenge and imperial collapse blends historical tragedy with the supernatural.

International Short Stories: English
Unknown
These diverse tales capture the grit, humor, and shadows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offering a window into the varied storytelling traditions of the British Isles.

Married
August Strindberg
Marriage is a fragile, often brutal experiment, where the initial intoxication of romance frequently yields to the grinding friction of social expectation, economic strain, and the slow erosion of individual identity.

Mugby Junction
Charles Dickens
A middle-aged man walks away from his orderly life, arriving at a lonely junction to find something he cannot name. This collection of linked tales captures the haunting, mechanical, and human rhythms of a changing industrial world.

New York Times Current History
Various
This collection of contemporary reports, official documents, and editorial commentary captures the immediate, fractured reality of the Great War as it unfolded in the spring and summer of 1915. It functions as a historical snapshot of a world struggling to comprehend the rapid shift toward industrialized, total…

Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A History
Richard Valpy French
This work traces the persistent entanglement of alcohol with English culture, examining how beverages and drinking customs shaped national life from the era of the Saxons to the nineteenth century.

Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
These profiles of medieval medical practitioners argue that modern scientific discovery is often a rediscovery, revealing a sophisticated heritage of clinical observation and surgical skill long overlooked by history.