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All free summaries — page 37
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 37 of 714.
The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York
Edward Eggleston
A well-meaning young woman in Gilded Age New York embraces the practice of faith-healing, throwing her high-society engagement into turmoil as class expectations, religious zeal, and modern medical science collide.
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
A clear-eyed manual of political survival strips away medieval moralizing to reveal how power is seized, held, and lost. It offers cold instructions for securing a state in an unpredictable world.
Women in the shadows
Ann Bannon
A young woman in 1950s Greenwich Village struggles to navigate the painful boundary between her desires and the safety of mid-century social conventions.
Farthest North, Vol. II: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896
Fridtjof Nansen
Two men step off a frozen ship into an endless white desert, gambling their lives on two kayaks, a pack of dying dogs, and a drift they cannot control.
What's Wrong with the World
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A society cannot fix its future until it recovers the bravery to admit its past choices were catastrophic mistakes.
The School of Recreation (1684 edition)
R. H. (Robert Howlett)
A manual of outdoor and indoor pastimes showing how XVII-century gentlemen turned physical motion into art, music, and strategy.
With the Naval Brigade in Natal, 1899-1900: Journal of Active Service
C. R. N. (Charles Richard Newdigate) Burne
Heavy naval artillery, dragged across the rugged veldt by oxen and sheer muscle, transforms a continental war of infantry and earthworks into an unprecedented exercise in military improvisation.
Doctrina Christiana: The first book printed in the Philippines, Manila, 1593
Unknown
A long-lost sixteenth-century catechism created in Manila reveals the convergence of European missionary zeal, indigenous Tagalog language, and Chinese block-printing craftsmanship.
La Chanson de Roland
Léonce Rabillon
A bloody betrayal in the Pyrenean passes transforms a rear-guard defense into a soaring tale of doomed heroism, royal vengeance, and unyielding medieval honor.
A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison
Benjamin Waterhouse
Captured on the high seas during the War of 1812, a young American surgeon endures overcrowding, vermin, and starvation across a series of British prison ships and grim depots.
The Opal Serpent
Fergus Hume
An aspiring London writer attempting to win his beloved becomes tangled in a macabre murder mystery when a stolen piece of jewelry pins a dead man's lips shut.
The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Francis Bacon
A chillingly pragmatic study of human ambition, political power, and personal conduct, written by a master observer of the Renaissance state.
Ahead of the Army
William O. Stoddard
A teenage supercargo finds himself stranded in revolutionary Mexico on the eve of the Mexican-American War, forced to navigate hostile armies, shifting politics, and dangerous mountain passes to survive.
Kalevala : the Epic Poem of Finland
John Martin Crawford
Ancient Finnish singers frame creation, love, magic, and war as songs. Chanted words can fell an enemy, construct a ship, or bend the elements to human will.
Montezuma's Castle, and Other Weird Tales
Charles B. (Charles Barney) Cory
An intrepid collector scales ancient cliff ruins, a boxer battles for glory, and mysterious powders induce ghostly spectral visitations across sixteen macabre, globe-trotting yarns.
The Herapath Property
J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
A wealthy Member of Parliament is found shot dead inside his private office, leaving behind vast real estate and a missing final will. Suspicion falls across a web of greedy relatives, scheming ex-secretaries, and shadowy conspirators.
Chats on Household Curios
Fred. W. (Frederick William) Burgess
Every home is a repository of forgotten history, where everyday domestic objects gradually transform from ordinary tools into silent witnesses to the past.
Expansion and Conflict
William Edward Dodd
A struggle for raw land, economic advantage, and political power reshapes a young republic into a battleground of fiercely competing regions.
The Blue Fairy Book
Andrew Lang
A mortal wanders into a world where animals speak, giants demand impossible tasks, and a single careless promise can plunge an entire kingdom into darkness.
The Brown Mouse
Herbert Quick
An idealistic Iowa farm-hand takes over a troubled country schoolhouse, upending traditional education by teaching real-world agriculture, battling conservative locals, and winning the heart of his former rival.
The Promise: A Tale of the Great Northwest
James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx
A man cast out by the city discovers his true strength in the brutal North, where the cold tests his soul as fiercely as his body.
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume IV
Aphra Behn
Scheming lovers, foolish knights, and dueling bravos clash in a whirlwind of late seventeenth-century theatrical intrigue.
The Iliad of Homer: Translated into English Blank Verse by William Cowper
Homer
A supreme warrior sits out a war in his tent while his allies slaughter each other, returning to the fight only when his beloved companion dies.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin Abbott Abbott
Imagine living in a world completely flat like a sheet of paper, where every inhabitant looks like a simple line, and the sudden arrival of a three-dimensional sphere shatters every rule of reality you have ever known.
Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism: With an Essay on Baal Worship, on the Assyrian Sacred "Grove," and Other Allied Symbols
Thomas Inman
A provocative study traces modern Christian symbols back to ancient pagan sexual emblems, arguing that religious iconography across history centers on the universal human desire for life and fertility.
Observations on the Florid Song
Pier Francesco Tosi
A master class in baroque vocal technique, this treatise balances strict foundational discipline with the elevated expressive freedom of the Italian school.
The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness: A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society
Florence Hartley
A woman’s character, grace, and place in society are forged through the daily practice of unselfish consideration, refined habits, and meticulous self-governance.
The Ladies Book of Useful Information: Compiled from many sources
Anonymous
A nineteenth-century manual offers a fascinating, unfiltered look into the domestic, physical, and moral expectations placed upon women, combining practical home recipes with strict social counsel.
Letters to His Son, Complete: On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
A powerful father shapes his illegitimate son through decades of unrelenting epistolary advice, molding him into a polished diplomat capable of navigating the subtle, treacherous currents of eighteenth-century European high society.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
A single quiet choice on a lonely road can undo a decade of isolation, proving that forgiveness, unspoken love, and community are always waiting just beyond our stubbornness.
Poems: Household Edition
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A retreat from the frantic demands of commerce and public debate reveals a universe governed by quiet, inescapable spiritual laws. Here, the wild wood and the private hearth offer a lasting sanctuary for the human soul.
The Art of War
Jomini, Antoine Henri, baron de
A general leading an army across a border must balance military aggression against political reality, choosing whether to smash the enemy's center or turn their flank. Antoine Henri de Jomini codifies these choices into a permanent grammar of command.
The Later Cave-Men
Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
Before human history was ever written down, survival relied entirely on observing the seasons, understanding wild game, and learning how to cooperate under extreme environmental pressures.
To Love
Margaret Peterson
A young woman's search for autonomy in Edwardian London leads her through bitter romantic disillusionment and economic hardship toward a mature understanding of love.
History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills
Robert B. Shaw
A small-town New York enterprise builds a century-long empire on exotic claims, fierce family rivalries, and aggressive marketing.
Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos
Ptolemy
A vast, orderly framework maps human fate directly to the physical movement of the stars, transforming the night sky into a readable mathematical guide.
The Bible, King James Version, Complete Contents
Anonymous
From the initial spoken command that summons cosmos out of void to the vision of a city where night is abolished, a colossal saga traces the divine covenant with humanity through war, law, exile, and redemption.
Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks
H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock
A couple of small-town boys enlist in the United States Army to prove their worth, facing down a bully turned recruit, barracks hazing, and a gang of train robbers along the Western frontier.
Penny of Top Hill Trail
Belle Kanaris Maniates
A city girl in a borrowed blue suit, a brooding ranch foreman, and a trail of mistaken identity across the high country.
A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Fools, tyrants, and cunning beasts expose the absurdity of human vanity and ambition in a realm governed by strict, unyielding natural laws.
A Spelling-Book for Advanced Classes
Oliver Optic
Mastering complex vocabulary requires stripping away phonetic hints and forcing the mind to confront raw, unadorned letters. True linguistic confidence emerges only when students test their own knowledge against the bare requirements of language.
Up The Baltic
Oliver Optic
The voyage of a floating academy provides a rigorous education for boys navigating the social, physical, and moral challenges of travel across the Scandinavian coast.
Birds of the Rockies
Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
High above the sun-drenched plains of Colorado, a solitary observer scrambles up steep alpine trails, field-glass in hand, tracing the secret lives and melodious songs of North America’s most resilient high-altitude birds.
Margaret Montfort
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A peaceful summer at an elegant New England country estate turns into a delicate exercise in tact when an earnest young woman must manage a household of scheming relatives and wild children.
Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country
Joel Chandler Harris
Beneath the surface of an ordinary plantation spring lies a hidden country where talking animals, clever tricksters, and fairy-tale folk gather on a porch to share timeless stories.
A Patriotic Schoolgirl
Angela Brazil
Send off to boarding school on the South Coast during the Great War, two sisters navigate strict traditions, wartime economies, and a web of home-front intrigue.
The Shellback's Progress: In the Nineteenth Century
Runciman, Walter Runciman, Baron
Hard-bitten merchant sailors weather fierce storms, endure starvation rations, and clash with hypocritical commanders in this vivid portrait of nineteenth-century life under sail.
A Tar-Heel Baron
Mabell S. C. (Mabell Shippie Clarke) Smith
Driven into exile by false accusations back in Germany, an aristocrat attempts to clear his disgraced family name while forging an austere new farm life among the close-knit communities of the North Carolina mountains.