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All free summaries — page 271
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 271 of 714.
Cape Cod Stories
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
A crusty Cape Cod sea captain stumbles into hospitality, where eccentric summer tourists, runaway heiresses, and slippery local prophets prove far harder to navigate than any Atlantic gale.
Castle Richmond
Anthony Trollope
A quiet Irish estate becomes a battlefield of extortion, where an old fraud threatens to erase an entire family’s name, land, and future.
Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture
William Saunders
This guide serves as a practical, encyclopedic inventory of the diverse botanical specimens maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture in the late nineteenth century. It provides a crisp, descriptive survey of plants valued for their utility, medicinal properties, or industrial applications.
Donal Grant
George MacDonald
A young man takes a tutoring job at a remote castle, where he uncovers dark family secrets, a hidden chapel, and a love that transforms his life.
Europe After 8:15
H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken
Three American travel writers strip away the romanticized myths of pre-war Europe, revealing a continent of artificial night life, provincial absurdities, and carefully manufactured pleasure.
Every Man in His Humour
Ben Jonson
An eccentric circle of Londoners spends a chaotic day chasing their absurd obsessions, false reputations, and misguided suspicions.
Flora
A. L. O. E.
A gentle young woman believes her life is built on pure Christian virtue, until a charismatic, unbelieving baronet tests her quiet countryside home and reveals the hidden pride of her own heart. <Image alt="Vintage Victorian red book cover with gold foil decorations" caption="Victorian edition of Flora"…
From Dan to Beersheba: A Description of the Wonderful Land, with Maps and Engravings and a Prologue by the Author Containing the Latest Explorations and Discoveries
John Philip Newman
This nineteenth-century travelogue conducts a rigorous, reverent journey across Palestine, blending precise geographic measurements with vivid historical and biblical commentary.
Hector's Inheritance, Or, the Boys of Smith Institute
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A sudden blow strips a wealthy young orphan of his home, but his integrity transforms every trial into a new beginning.
Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health (New Edition)
Newsholme, Arthur, Sir
From the proper temperature for rendering fats to the statistical correction of urban mortality rates, this Victorian manual transforms the messy realities of daily existence into a rigorous, actionable science of survival.
Kepler
Walter W. (Walter William) Bryant
A visionary mathematician battles financial ruin, dogma, and his own bizarre superstitions to unlock the fundamental, elegant laws governing planetary motion.
King Lear's Wife
Gordon Bottomley
An icy, atmospheric examination of a domestic collapse, this work reimagines the origins of a Shakespearean tragedy through a cold, unflinching lens. It portrays the final days of a queen, the cold ambition of her daughter, and the decay of a royal marriage.
Latter-Day Sweethearts
Harrison, Burton, Mrs.
A wealthy socialite flees an uncomfortable domestic shift, embarking on a transatlantic voyage where unexpected connections, old flames, and social maneuverings redraw the boundaries of her future.
Mohun
John Esten Cooke
Two swords cross above a quiet Virginia hearth, framing a portrait of a past that refuses to die without a voice.
New-England's rarities discovered
Josselyn, John, active 1630-1675
Deep in the wilderness of a newly claimed continent, odd creatures swim, strange herbs heal severe wounds, and thick forests hide unexpected remedies for those observant enough to gather them.
Object Lessons on the Human Body: A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City
Sarah F. (Sarah Frances) Buckelew
A Victorian classroom transcript reveals how primary school children were taught to view their own anatomy through strict recitation and moral warnings.
Old Church Lore
William Andrews
Long before parish life narrowed into modern quietude, the medieval church presided over legal sanctuary, festive Sunday sports, gruesome trials by touch, and civic spectacle.
Old Mortality, Volume 1
Walter Scott
A young religious moderate in 1679 Scotland is thrust into a bloody civil war, caught between tyrannical royalists and fanatical Covenanting rebels while struggling to protect the woman he loves and preserve his own moral compass.
Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Beaurau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1891-1892, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 3-46
William Henry Holmes
Spun fibers, woven mats, and coarse netted sacks preserved in earth and clay reveal the elaborate artistic traditions of ancient North American peoples.
Protection from fire and thieves : Including the construction of locks, safes, strong-rooms, and fireproof buildings
George Hayter Chubb
Mechanical ingenuity stands as the sole defense against criminal cunning and thermal destruction in an urban world grown increasingly hazardous.
Recollections of My Youth
Ernest Renan
A quiet bell tolls from a submerged city beneath the Breton tides, calling a lost soul back to a faith he can no longer hold.
Religions of Ancient China
Herbert Allen Giles
Long before philosophical systems or imported creeds took hold, a personal, watching deity stood at the heart of Chinese spiritual life.
Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
Across the shallow salt marshes of the Adriatic, a fugitive settlement built of wood and mud slowly transforms into an invincible maritime empire ruled by a jealous, self-electing council of nobles.
Sketches of the Covenanters
J. C. (James Calvin) McFeeters
A devotion to divine liberty drives a persecuted people into the wilderness to defy the dictates of earthly kings.
The Appreciation of Music - Vol. 1 (of 3)
Daniel Gregory Mason
Train your ears to hear the logic, balance, and architecture within every musical phrase. This guide strips away confusing technical jargon to reveal how simple folk tunes gradually evolved into the monumental symphonic masterpieces of classical music.
The Boy With the U.S. Census
Francis Rolt-Wheeler
An eager youth tours early twentieth-century America as a census enumerator, discovering that the nation's truest heroes are those facing real hardship in its factory towns, icy frontiers, and crowded tenements.
The Clarion
Samuel Hopkins Adams
An idealistic young editor fights to reform his newspaper, confronting his quack-doctor father, local corruption, and a deadly, hidden epidemic in his city.
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast
William Cowper Brann
A ferocious nineteenth-century journalist takes aim at the hypocrisies of his age, tearing into corrupt politicians, economic theorists, and religious bigots with unforgiving satire.
The De Coverley Papers, From 'The Spectator'
Steele, Richard, Sir
A quiet observer moves through the coffee-houses of London and the quiet lanes of Worcestershire, chronicling the life, oddities, and enduring charm of an old-fashioned country gentleman.
The death's head meteor
Neil R. Jones
A lone astronaut's space car becomes wedged inside a massive, skull-shaped meteor that is knocked off course and sent plunging straight into Mars.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 1 (of 2)
George Adam Smith
A scholar’s guide to the ancient Hebrew prophets, mapping a turbulent history of faith, political intrigue, and moral struggle onto the enduring landscape of human character.
The Haunted Mind (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A sudden midnight awakening leaves a sleeper suspended between reality and illusion, where dark phantoms of memory rise to haunt the mind before dissolving into peaceful visions of human connection and quiet rest.
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 07
Unknown
A vast civilization fractures and rebuilds across a thousand years, driven by ambitious emperors, ruthless invaders, and the unyielding weight of its own administrative corruption.
The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales
H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen
A mother perishes in a deep glacier, but her rescued infant grows into a fearless mountain hunter, unaware that the icy nature spirit who spared him intends to claim him in the end.
The Kidnapped President
Guy Boothby
A straightforward British merchant sailor accepts a lucrative, secret assignment in Central America, only to find himself trapped in a high-stakes conspiracy of revolution, kidnapping, and political intrigue.
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume II
Theophilus Cibber
A collection of literary portraits reveals how the brilliant, flawed poets of Great Britain navigating political turmoil, poverty, and personal ambition shaped a nation’s dramatic and poetic history.
The Living Link: A Novel
James De Mille
Imprisoned in her own ancestral estate by a ruthless guardian, a resolute young heiress fights against a web of deceit and a forced marriage to reclaim her freedom and her family's honor.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
Unknown
Colonial officials, Jesuit missionaries, and royal decree-makers scramble to defend, maintain, and govern a precarious Pacific outpost.
The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in Arms
William Morris
A quiet valley of peaceful farming folk finds its ancient tranquility shattered when a mysterious threat emerges from the wild-wood, forcing them into a desperate alliance with forgotten, displaced kindred to reclaim their freedom.
The Ruined Cities of Zululand
Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley
An imperial expedition turns into a desperate struggle for survival when an army officer and a missionary trek across the uncharted interior of southern Africa in search of ancient ruins.
The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A summer rainstorm sends a restless young traveler ducking into a showman's covered wagon, where he meets a band of colorful rovers who briefly accept him as their resident storyteller.
The Story of the Submarine
Farnham Bishop
Submerged beneath the ocean waves lies a hidden revolution in naval warfare, where daring mechanical visionaries risked their lives to reshape global power dynamics and rewrite the rules of combat.
The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew, King of the Beggars: Containing his Life, a Dictionary of the Cant Language, and many Entertaining Particulars of that Extraordinary Man
Unknown
A rogue of good family flees his Devonshire school, joins a band of itinerant mendicants, and turns the art of trickery into a lifelong profession.
The Voice of the People
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
An ambitious boy from the dirt-roads of post-bellum Virginia fights his way to the governor’s mansion, only to learn that political victory cannot buy the heart of the woman he loves or heal a fractured state.
The watchmakers' hand book
Claudius Saunier
Precision micro-engineering meets workshop craft in a definitive nineteenth-century manual that transforms raw metals, mathematical principles, and specialized tooling into time-keeping art.
The White Moll
Frank L. (Frank Lucius) Packard
In the shadowed alleys of New York’s underworld, a woman known for her mercy becomes an outlaw overnight, forced to adopt a dead crone's identity to evade the law and outwit a ruthless criminal syndicate.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 08
Robert Louis Stevenson
A young ward discovers that his guardian murdered his father, throwing his loyalty into chaos amidst a civil war.
The Youngest Girl in the School
Evelyn Sharp
An irrepressible tomboy steps into the rigid world of an English boarding school, turning social hierarchies upside down through sheer honesty and an unfortunate knack for breaking bones.