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All free summaries — page 245
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 245 of 714.
The Dominion of the Air: The Story of Aerial Navigation
John M. (John Mackenzie) Bacon
Upward bound, humanity spends centuries trying to conquer the sky, progressing from myths and dangerous leaps to scientific aerial navigation.
The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel
Zane Grey
A dying tenderfoot flees into the Utah badlands, where a devout Mormon patriarch gives him a home, a gun, and a second chance at life.
The Land of Heart's Desire
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
A young bride in eighteenth-century Ireland finds herself torn between the quiet safety of domestic love and the alluring, dangerous freedom of the fairy realm.
The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay
Maurice Hewlett
A king’s divided nature turns his greatest triumphs into ashes, leaving the woman who loves him to pay the ultimate price.
The Marvellous History of the Shadowless Man, and The Cold Heart
Adelbert von Chamisso
When a man sells what seems like a minor piece of his identity to gain quick fortune, the transaction quietly strips away everything that makes a human life worth living.
The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume 4.: The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century
Unknown
A majestic strain of mountain lyricism meets the quiet heartbeats of cottage life, capturing a century of Scottish song in all its rugged beauty.
The Mysteries of Paris, illustrated with etchings, Vol. 1
Eugène Sue
Darkness and light collide in the shadowy underworld of nineteenth-century Paris, where a noble disguised as a commoner seeks to rescue the forgotten and punish the cruel.
The post-girl
Edward Charles Booth
An urban composer and an orphaned village post-girl weather scandal, pride, and local eccentricities in a windswept Yorkshire community.
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer
A shadowy mastermind returns from the grave to strike at the heart of the British Empire, leaving a trail of unnatural deaths and terrifying global conspiracies in his wake.
The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets
Jane Addams
An urgent plea to rescue urban adolescents from the crushing monotony of industrial labor and the predatory lures of commercialized vice.
Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald: for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's
Walter Scott
A military sergeant vanishes in the desolate Scottish Highlands, leaving behind a murder mystery solved—or perhaps obscured—by the spectral testimony of a restless spirit and the grim suspicions of a distrustful community.
Weird Tales from Northern Seas
Jonas Lie
Out on the black, storm-scoured waters of sub-arctic Norway, men battle freezing waves for a living, unaware that malignant sea-monsters and mountain spirits are watching from the dark to claim their lives.
A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese, as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect
Joseph Edkins
This is a meticulous linguistic study of the mid-19th-century Shanghai dialect, offering a rare, granular look at a spoken tongue that has since evolved significantly. It serves as a vital bridge between the rigid, literary Chinese of the past and the living, breathing colloquialism of a bustling trade hub.
Applied Psychology for Nurses
Mary F. Porter
Healing requires more than mending bones and cooling fevers; a sick attitude can linger long after the body recovers. True nursing addresses the mind and body as an inseparable pair.
Chaucer and His Times
Grace E. (Grace Eleanor) Hadow
Geoffrey Chaucer stands as a towering figure of English literature, yet his work remains tethered to the complex, shifting social landscape of the fourteenth century. This concise study illuminates how the poet bridged the medieval and the modern.
Deductive Logic
St. George William Joseph Stock
A clear, practical guide to formal thought, this Victorian manual strips away academic bloat to reveal the underlying machinery of everyday arguments.
Epidemics Resulting from Wars
Friedrich Prinzing
A dark record shows how military conflicts repeatedly unleash lethal contagions, proving that disease routinely kills far more people than the sword.
Her Majesty's Mails: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the British Post-Office
William Lewins
The British Post-Office is a vast, intricate engine of Victorian progress, transforming from a disjointed, expensive burden into a triumph of civilization that unified a growing nation.
Journal of a Residence in America
Fanny Kemble
This vivid, restless journal captures the internal turbulence of a young woman navigating the professional demands of the American stage while struggling with the stark cultural contrasts of a burgeoning new world.
Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman
P. C. (Phineas Camp) Headley
A relentless union of grand strategy and total war moves across the Southern heartland, tearing up iron tracks and redefining the American continent.
Plague of Pythons
Frederik Pohl
An unseen force seizes normal citizens, driving them to commit horrific acts before leaving them to face the consequences.
The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste, Containing over Two Hundred Recipes for Italian Dishes
Waters, W. G., Mrs.
Italian cuisine offers a vibrant, economical alternative to rigid culinary traditions through clever techniques, thoughtful flavorings, and accessible, everyday ingredients.
The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories
George MacDonald
An unvisited world yields its deepest magic through loss, gravity, and the quiet weight of wonder.
The Mabinogion Vol. 3
Schreiber, Charlotte, Lady
A vast, untamed landscape of early Welsh legend where mortal princes trade places with underworld kings, giants wade across oceans, and men are transformed into beasts by spellcraft.
The Matabele Campaign: Being a Narrative of the Campaign in Suppressing the Native Rising in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, 1896
Baden-Powell of Gilwell, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Baron
A military officer’s field journal records the brutal 1896 counterinsurgency in present-day Zimbabwe, capturing the chaotic skirmishes, grueling wilderness scouting, and tense peace talks that shaped British imperial rule in southern Africa.
The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle
Katherine Stokes
A four-girl motoring club crosses the Atlantic, touring Great Britain and Ireland in a red automobile while unwittingly unraveling a high-society conspiracy of theft, kidnapping, and inherited vengeance.
The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan.: A Full Expose. By A Late Member
Anonymous
A shadowy network of violent partisans spreads through the post-Civil War South, bound by horrific oaths sworn over human skulls in the dead of night.
The Railroad Question: A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and remedies for their abuses
William Larrabee
The railroad stands as a triumph of modern engineering, yet its unchecked power creates a profound threat to the democratic promise of equal opportunity and the integrity of the American state.
Titan: A Romance. v. 2 (of 2)
Jean Paul
When noble ideals clash with deception in eighteenth-century Germany, a young prince must lose his sight, his lovers, and his mind’s quietude before discovering who he truly is.
A Story of the Red Cross
Clara Barton
A quiet leader marshals voluntary aid to heal communities shattered by war, pestilence, and the unbridled forces of nature.
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930
Various
In an era where technology swiftly redefines the boundaries of reality, this pulp anthology captures early twentieth-century anxieties through tales of cosmic invasions, insidious mind control, and high-speed spacefaring adventures.
Betty Zane
Zane Grey
When the ammunition inside Fort Henry runs out during its final, desperate siege, a young pioneer woman volunteers to sprint through enemy fire to retrieve a keg of gunpowder.
Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. I
Charles Lever
HOOK A prolific novelist’s life unfolds through his own candid correspondence, revealing the precarious, nomadic existence of a man who wrote to live while struggling to escape the shadow of his own professional reputation.
Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley
William Henry Giles Kingston
An expansive 19th-century survey of African travel, chronicling the perilous, river-borne journeys and encounters that mapped the continent's heart.
Historical Epochs of the French Revolution: With The Judgment And Execution Of Louis XVI., King Of France
Henry Goudemetz
A stark, dispassionate journal of the French Revolution lays bare how theoretical idealism rapidly degenerated into absolute public terror, relentless executions, and state-sanctioned violence.
History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12)
G. (Gaston) Maspero
A fractured region falls under the sway of ruthless imperial ambition as armies march from the Mediterranean coast to the Iranian plateau.
Mare Nostrum (Our Sea): A Novel
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
Two lovers, a Mediterranean captain and a German spy, are drawn into a web of war, betrayal, and tragic sea-bound retribution.
On Some Ancient Battle-Fields in Lancashire: And Their Historical, Legendary, and Aesthetic Associations
Charles Hardwick
A rigorous antiquarian survey traces ancient Lancashire conflict through soil, burial mounds, and local folklore to separate true history from mythical idealization.
On the Track
Henry Lawson
Life on the Australian frontier is raw, dry, and relentlessly hard, yet saved from grimness by dark humor, fierce loyalties, and the endless, easygoing talk of men who have nothing left to lose.
Papers from Lilliput
J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
A gentle, inquisitive intelligence peers out from behind every line, transforming life's small absurdities into warm, meditative art.
Saint Joan
Bernard Shaw
This play dramatizes the life and death of a revolutionary peasant girl whose singular conviction changed the course of history, only to face a brutal, systematic destruction by the very institutions she sought to serve.
Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series
John Addington Symonds
A scholar travels through time-touched towns and landscapes, tracing how art, geography, and political ambitions forged the spirit of Mediterranean civilization.
Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period
Robert Grant Watson
Imperial ambitions clash against wild landscapes as European powers carve out a new world across three centuries.
Strong poison
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
A dead lover, a tincture of arsenic, and a woman on trial for her life leave an aristocratic sleuth fighting the clock—and his own heart—to expose the real killer.
The Children of the New Forest
Frederick Marryat
A family of orphans finds refuge in the rugged wilderness of a royal forest, learning to survive while the storm of the English Civil War rages around their hidden home.
The Golden Legend
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A dying prince accepts a farm girl's offer to lay down her life for his cure, setting off a spiritual journey across medieval Europe where demon, saint, and mortal contend for a single soul. <Image alt="Illustration of a medieval noblewoman holding a golden vessel" caption="Medieval drama of sacrifice and grace"…
The Green Carnation
Robert Hichens
A sharp satire of Victorian aestheticism, this parody captures two dandyish intellectuals spinning endless paradoxes across London drawing rooms and country gardens.
The Hampdenshire Wonder
J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
An ordinary English village faces an intellectual catastrophe when a child is born with a mind so vast that human knowledge can neither contain nor comprehend it.