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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 402 of 714.

Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 4, April, 1886
Various
This mid-Victorian periodical offers a wide-ranging, devotional, and political window into the Irish-American experience of 1886. It captures the intersection of faith, heritage, and the burgeoning social concerns of the late nineteenth century.

Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885
Various
The Victorian era was a time of boundless curiosity, and this collection captures the intellectual pulse of the year 1885 through a wide-angle lens of global discourse.

England, Canada and the Great War
L. G. (Louis Georges) Desjardins
An impassioned defense of Canadian participation in the First World War, this work argues that supporting the British Empire was not only a constitutional duty but a moral necessity for the survival of global civilization.

Fishes of Chautauqua, Cowley and Elk Counties, Kansas
Artie L. Metcalf
A survey of the aquatic life in south-central Kansas, this work documents the fish populations of three counties during a period of significant environmental change. It captures a precise snapshot of a regional ecosystem.

Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious
Richard Marsh
The absurdities of daily life are rarely as sharp or as funny as when they are taken with total, misplaced seriousness. In this collection of twelve short stories, the mundane—a lost purse, a bus ride, a rowing lesson—collides with the bizarre, resulting in a series of sketches that find the humor in social…

From sketch-book and diary
Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson) Butler
Travelers find, in the vast and the intimate, the same truth: that the spirit of a place lives in its people, its light, and the fleeting beauty of the disappearing world.

Glasses
Henry James
HOOK A woman’s desperate, prideful refusal to acknowledge her failing eyesight leads to a ruinous social masquerade, trapping her and her devoted suitor in a web of vanity and sacrifice.

Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness: Being a Series of Lectures to Youth of Both Sexes, on Character, Principles, Associates, Amusements, Religion, and Marriage
John Mather Austin
To ascend the ladder of a meaningful life, one must cultivate virtue, discipline the mind, and choose companions with the utmost care, for character is the only reliable foundation for lasting happiness.

Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving, with Other Ballads and Poems
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
The domestic heart and the national spirit collide in these verses, painting a portrait of mid-19th-century American life defined by simple virtues, profound loss, and a steadfast faith in duty.

In Old Kentucky
Edward Marshall
A mountain girl’s life is forever changed when an outsider arrives, bridging the divide between the rugged, secluded hills and the horse-racing culture of the Bluegrass. This classic tale captures a collision of two worlds, anchored by a secret past and the pursuit of a thoroughbred champion.

In the Name of Liberty: A Story of the Terror
Owen Johnson
In the shadow of the guillotine, a young couple discovers that the high-minded rhetoric of revolution often masks a brutal, intimate struggle for survival. This historical narrative strips away the pageantry of the French Terror to reveal the fragile, desperate lives caught in its gears.

In the Shadow of Death
P. H. (Pieter Hendrick) Kritzinger
The Anglo-Boer War was a conflict of intimate violence, fought over the ownership of a land and the definition of a people. This narrative records that struggle from the perspective of a Boer leader who survived the battlefield only to face the gallows.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Stephen Leacock
Stephen Leacock
This collection of works represents the sprawling, satirical, and surprisingly earnest output of a writer who moved fluidly between the roles of academic economist, historical chronicler, and master of the deadpan comedic sketch. It serves as a comprehensive archive of a distinct early-twentieth-century voice,…

Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
This collection of tales invites you into a quiet corner of Victorian English life, where small-town secrets, domestic mysteries, and the bittersweet unfolding of lives are observed with an unblinking, sympathetic eye.

King Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare
A prince outgrows his wayward youth while an ailing king struggles to hold a fractured realm together, setting the stage for an inevitable, bittersweet transformation of power.

Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems
William Edmondstoune Aytoun
This collection of verse captures the romantic, tragic, and martial spirit of a vanished Scotland, where loyalty to a lost cause often proved more enduring than life itself.

Letters from the Cape
Duff Gordon, Lucie, Lady
A fragile traveler seeks health in the distant sunshine of the Cape, finding a vibrant, complex world that challenges the rigid boundaries of her Victorian sensibilities.

Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam
Cyril J. O'Brien
HOOK The recapture of Guam in 1944 was a brutal, hard-won campaign to reclaim American soil from entrenched Japanese forces, serving as a pivotal moment in the Pacific War.

Life of Robert Stevenson, Civil Engineer
David Stevenson
HOOK This record captures the practical life of a pioneer who tamed the treacherous Scottish coastline through the sheer force of engineering ingenuity and persistent observation.

Mountain: A Novel
Clement Wood
A young man struggles to define his own morality against the backdrop of his father’s industrial empire, leading to a clash between the comforts of inherited wealth and the harsh realities of a labor-riven southern town.

Murder in Black Letter
Poul Anderson
A scholar is drawn into a lethal hunt for a rare manuscript, forcing him to confront a hidden history of violence beneath the quiet facade of a university town.

Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp
Annie Roe Carr
HOOK A bright, high-school girl faces a family financial crisis and finds her courage tested in the rugged, snow-swept lumber camps of Michigan.

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism: February 2003
United States. Executive Office of the President
This document outlines a formal, post-9/11 vision for national security, defining the strategic framework for the United States to combat international terrorism through a multi-front, global approach. It serves as a foundational record of the shift in American policy toward preemptive, asymmetric warfare and the…

New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)
B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts
A methodical defense of a foundational religious text, this work gathers historical, archaeological, and theological arguments to establish the authenticity of a controversial scripture.

North American Stone Implements
Charles Rau
A careful study of ancient stone tools reveals how the early inhabitants of North America fashioned their world from flint, hornstone, and granite. This foundational text documents the meticulous search for evidence of human life alongside the continent’s extinct megafauna.

Old News: (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This is a meditative exploration of American history, using the fragile, yellowed pages of 18th-century newspapers as a lens to view the transformation of colonial society from a rigid outpost into a revolutionary nation.

On the Indian Sect of the Jainas
Georg Bühler
HOOK This historical inquiry recovers the identity of an ancient Indian faith, proving that the Jaina sect is not a Buddhist derivative, but a distinct, enduring tradition that flourished alongside it.

One Against the Moon
Donald A. Wollheim
A determined teenager stows away on a rocket to reach the Moon, only to find himself stranded in a mysterious, subterranean world of survival and strange alien life.

"Over There" with the Australians
R. Hugh (Reginald Hugh) Knyvett
This narrative captures the visceral reality of a soldier’s life in the Great War, blending the camaraderie of the trenches with the profound ache of longing for home. It is a candid, firsthand account of human endurance.

Pedagogics as a System
Karl Rosenkranz
HOOK This work presents a rigorous, philosophical architecture for the act of teaching, arguing that education is not merely a collection of classroom habits but a systematic journey toward human freedom.

Poems: Containing The Restropect, Odes, Elegies, Sonnets, &c
Robert Southey
These youthful verses capture the restless spirit of a changing age, blending intimate personal reflection with an ambitious reach into the mythic and historical past.

Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby
Kathleen Thompson Norris
This collection of short stories captures the quiet desperation and sudden, sharp joys of early twentieth-century American life. It is a portrait of people navigating the hidden fractures of their own expectations.

Popular Tales
Madame (Elisabeth Charlotte Pauline) Guizot
Kindness, duty, and the quiet labor of self-improvement form the bedrock of these formative tales. Each story serves as a lens through which young readers learn to navigate the complexities of character and social responsibility.

Prefaces to Fiction
Unknown
These collected eighteenth-century prefaces chart the birth of the modern novel, capturing the era’s urgent transition from outlandish heroic romances to the intimate, psychological realism of life and manners.

Prisoners of Chance: The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, through His Love for a Lady of France
Randall Parrish
Geoffrey Benteen, a resourceful frontiersman, plunges into a desperate rescue mission to save a French lady’s husband from execution, only to find himself entangled in a perilous, supernatural conspiracy deep within the uncharted wilderness.

Public School Domestic Science
Adelaide Hoodless
Scientific principles meet the kitchen stove in this foundational guide to domestic efficiency, transforming the daily labor of meal preparation into a disciplined study of health, biology, and economic management.

Religion and Art in Ancient Greece
Ernest Arthur Gardner
This exploration examines the profound, shifting relationship between the divine and the sculpted form in the classical world. It traces how Greek religion and art moved from primitive symbolism to sophisticated, human-centered idealism.

Salt Water: The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman
William Henry Giles Kingston
A young midshipman’s lifelong devotion to the sea carries him through shipwrecks, pirate skirmishes, and the hard-won bonds of naval service.

San Francisco in Ruins: A Pictorial History of Eight Score Photo-Views of the Earthquake Effects, Flames' Havoc, Ruins Everywhere, Relief Camps
Unknown
A harrowing, immediate account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, this chronicle captures the sheer scale of a city’s sudden annihilation and its desperate, rapid mobilization for survival.

Selections from Five English Poets
Unknown
This collection of classic English poetry illuminates the profound connection between music and verse, inviting readers to experience the rhythmic beauty of some of literature's most enduring voices. Through a careful curation of lyrics, epics, and dramatic poems, the anthology explores the human condition, from…

Sir Walter Scott
George Saintsbury
A thoughtful exploration of a literary titan’s life, tracing his evolution from a curious collector of border traditions to a novelist of international renown and, finally, a man defined by his final, stoic sacrifice.

Small Souls
Louis Couperus
HOOK A woman returns to her native city after twenty years of exile, only to find that the past is a living, breathing weight she can never truly escape.

Switzerland
Frank Fox
The mountains stand as both a physical barrier and a cradle of liberty, shaping a nation that has survived by turning adversity into an enduring, independent spirit.

Tales of the Trains: Being Some Chapters of Railroad Romance by Tilbury Tramp, Queen's Messenger
Charles Lever
The iron rail transforms the rhythm of life, pulling travelers into a world of rapid collisions, bizarre encounters, and the relentless, mechanical pulse of a new age.

Tarzan at the Earth's core
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A colossal dirigible pierces the North Pole to rescue an emperor, only to crash into the prehistoric, sun-drenched wilderness of a hollow Earth, where every creature is a predator and survival is the only law.

The Art of Confectionary: Shewing the Various Methods of Preserving All Sorts of Fruits, Dry and Liquid
Edward Lambert
The confectioner’s craft is a precise science of heat and patience, turning the fleeting sweetness of orchard fruits into enduring, crystalline treasures. This eighteenth-century guide demystifies the delicate transformations of sugar, offering clear, rhythmic instructions for those who wish to master the art of…

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of mid-nineteenth-century America, offering a bridge between the era’s high-minded political idealism and its vibrant, domestic storytelling. It stands as a vivid time capsule of a nation defining its voice.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
The spirit of a nation at war defines these pages, capturing a fragile, flickering moment of American life amidst the profound uncertainty of the Civil War.