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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 407 of 714.

The Court of the Empress Josephine
Imbert de Saint-Amand
The rise and fall of an imperial dream, captured through the intimate, often melancholic lens of a woman caught in the orbit of history’s most restless conqueror.

The Dabistán, or School of manners, Volume 2 (of 3): translated from the original Persian, with notes and illustrations
David Shea
A vast, sweeping repository of seventeenth-century religious thought, this work documents the diverse spiritual landscape of India and Persia with remarkable, dispassionate curiosity. It serves as a rare bridge between ancient traditions and the dawn of modern comparative theology.

The Earlier Work of Titian
Phillips, Claude, Sir
The young mountain boy from Cadore masters the vibrant, sensuous language of Venice, evolving from an apprentice of Giorgione into the unrivaled titan of the High Renaissance.

The First Hundred Thousand: Being the Unofficial Chronicle of a Unit of "K(1)"
Ian Hay
A chronicle of ordinary men thrust into the machinery of total war, this narrative captures the sudden, raw shift from civilian life to the brutal reality of the front line.

The Flying Stingaree: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story
Harold L. (Harold Leland) Goodwin
HOOK When a mysterious, ray-shaped object begins haunting the Chesapeake Bay and vanishing local crabbers, two curious teenagers take their houseboat into dangerous waters to uncover the truth.

The Great Hunger
Johan Bojer
A man of boundless ambition pursues a life of intellectual and material conquest, only to discover that the truest human victory lies in the quiet, painful work of forgiveness and reconciliation.

The History of the 7th Battalion Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders
James Walter Sandilands
The "Shiny 7th" endures as a testament to the iron discipline and stubborn humanity of the Scottish infantry. This account preserves the memory of those who lived, fought, and died in the mud of the Great War.

The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell
Unknown
A man born without the senses of hearing or speech discovers he possesses the uncanny "second sight," navigating a skeptical eighteenth-century London by predicting the fates and fortunes of those who seek him out.

The Holes Around Mars
Jerome Bixby
A team of astronauts discovers an impossible series of perfect, uniform tunnels piercing the Martian landscape. They soon realize these holes are not ruins, but the orbital path of a singular, invisible, and terrifyingly swift object.

The Irish Guards in the Great War, Volume 1 (of 2)
Rudyard Kipling
A disciplined, unflinching account of the First Battalion Irish Guards as they navigate the brutal exhaustion and administrative absurdity of the Western Front.

The Life of David: As Reflected in His Psalms
Alexander Maclaren
This biographical study examines the life of the biblical King David through the lens of the poetry he authored, tracing his evolution from a shepherd to a sovereign. It provides a historical and spiritual portrait of a complex, often contradictory human figure.

The Lion and the Mouse: A Story of American Life
Charles Klein
This drama of conscience explores the collision between unchecked corporate power and the moral obligations of the individual, centering on a young woman’s battle to redeem her disgraced father.

The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX.: A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
Various
This vintage monthly magazine captures the Victorian spirit of childhood, blending moral instruction, animal fables, and gentle domestic vignettes into a charming, illustrated bridge between parents and their youngest readers.

The Range Dwellers
B. M. Bower
A wealthy, aimless young man is exiled by his father to a rough Montana ranch, where he struggles to find his footing and wins the heart of his enemy's daughter.

The Red Horizon
Patrick MacGill
War is a raw, sensory experience defined by the constant proximity of death and the strange, stubborn persistence of human camaraderie. This account captures the daily existence of a common soldier in the trenches of France during the First World War.

The Romance of War
James Grant
This sprawling 1847 epic follows a young Highlander through the crucible of the Napoleonic Wars, blending harrowing battlefield realism with the ornate, suspenseful melodrama of a soldier’s life in the early nineteenth century.
The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter
Petronius Arbiter
A sprawling, fragmented journey through the debauchery and artifice of Imperial Rome, this narrative captures the hollow opulence of a society fueled by vanity, excess, and the relentless pursuit of self-interest.

The Sisters
Georg Ebers
The lives of two sisters, bound by duty to the gods, unravel in the shadow of imperial ambition and the shifting sands of ancient Egypt. This tale follows their quiet devotion as it is suddenly thrust into the center of a Roman struggle for power and royal intrigue.

The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land
Ralph Connor
This account of a young minister serving as a front-line chaplain during the Great War explores the intersection of faith, physical courage, and the heavy toll of duty. It remains a poignant, if stylized, artifact of the period’s effort to reconcile the horrors of industrialized slaughter with traditional notions…

The Staircase At The Heart's Delight: 1894
Anna Katharine Green
A nameless young detective confronts a lethal urban conspiracy, risking his life to navigate a hidden mechanism of death. He survives a plunge into the icy river to expose a criminal enterprise operating in the shadows of 1840s New York.

The story of the Rhinegold (Der Ring des Nibelungen) told for young people
Anna Alice Chapin
The cycle of the gods ends in fire and water, resolving an ancient curse of greed and betrayal. This retelling brings the vast, complex mythology of the Ring into the reach of younger readers, grounding high tragedy in the universal language of fairy tales.

The Story of the Siren
E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster
A scholarly quest in a Mediterranean grotto takes a surreal turn when a local boatman shares the haunting, tragic history of his brother’s encounter with a mythological creature.

The Tickencote Treasure
William Le Queux
A humble doctor’s quiet life is upended when a chance encounter at sea reveals a centuries-old maritime mystery and a hidden cache of Spanish gold.

The Uses of Italic: A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters
Frederick W. (Frederick William) Hamilton
Italic type serves as a refined tool for emphasis and distinction in printing. This guide clarifies its origins and establishes the professional standards for its appropriate application in modern composition.

The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta
R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman
A brilliant but broken man transforms his scientific expertise into a cold, methodical campaign of vengeance against the criminal who destroyed his life.

The Wasted Generation
Owen Johnson
In this intimate, searching chronicle, a soldier finds himself caught between the wreckage of his past and the terrifying, transformative necessity of a nation at war. It is a quiet meditation on the high cost of finding one’s way.

The Young Franc Tireurs, and Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
The teenage brothers Ralph and Percy Barclay plunge into the chaos of the Franco-Prussian War, proving that courage and common sense can sometimes outmatch the might of an invading army.

There is No Death
Florence Marryat
This is a firsthand account of a nineteenth-century novelist’s journey into the world of spiritualism. It chronicles her search for proof that consciousness survives bodily death, documenting the séances, mediums, and apparitions she encountered across two continents.

Three Comedies
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
In the theater of late-nineteenth-century Norway, domestic life is a battlefield of hidden histories and stifled desires. These plays peel back the layers of bourgeois respectability to reveal the painful cost of maintaining appearances.

Valladolid, Oviedo, Segovia, Zamora, Avila & Zaragoza: An Historical & Descriptive Account
Albert Frederick Calvert
These six storied cities of Spain, rich in architectural marvels and turbulent history, offer a window into the soul of a nation that has often stood at the crossroads of empire and faith.

Washo Religion
James F. Downs
Spiritual life among the Washo persists through a complex weave of ancient myth, personal dream-guidance, and the quiet, enduring authority of the natural world. This study examines how these beliefs remain vibrant and vital in the face of modern change.

A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day
H. G. Swift
This account chronicles the decades-long struggle of British postal workers to secure fair wages, reasonable hours, and the right to organize against a rigid, often hostile, government bureaucracy. It serves as a stark, detailed record of labor history within a vital state institution.

A year of prophesying
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
The future belongs to those who dare to imagine a unified world, yet the present remains stubbornly trapped in the cage of competing nationalisms. These essays serve as a bold, urgent wake-up call for an age drifting toward catastrophe.

Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699
Lyman Carrier
The story of early Virginia is often told through politics and war, but its survival truly rested on the slow, often desperate, transformation of a wilderness into a landscape of fields and fences.

An index to the collected works of William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
The ultimate key to a vast literary inheritance, this volume functions as a bridge between the scattered genius of a nineteenth-century essayist and the readers who wish to find their way through his work.
Avatâras: Four lectures delivered at the twenty-fourth anniversary
Annie Besant
The divine descends into the world of form to guide humanity through its darkest cycles. These lectures explore the nature, purpose, and manifestations of the Avatâra, the singular bridge between the Eternal and the temporal.

Barren Ground
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
The girl in the orange shawl stands at the threshold of a life defined by the stubborn, broomsedge-choked soil of rural Virginia. She discovers that while love is a fragile spark, the land demands an iron-willed endurance.

Beggars
W. H. (William Henry) Davies
The professional beggar is a craftsman of the road, balancing impudence, wit, and a peculiar brand of freedom against the harsh realities of the lodging-house. This exploration of vagrancy reveals the stark divide between the bold, enterprising American tramp and the timid, struggling English counterpart.

Betty's Happy Year
Carolyn Wells
The spirited daughter of a formerly impoverished family navigates the social complexities of the well-to-do, balancing her natural, impulsive kindness against the rigid expectations of her wealthy relatives.

Beyond the Old Frontier: Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders
George Bird Grinnell
The vast, untamed territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific once stood as a formidable, unknown frontier, where survival depended upon the steady aim of a rifle and an intimate knowledge of the land. This collection of historical accounts brings to life the era when fur traders, scouts, and young…

Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule: A Study of the Ideals and Aspirations of the Bohemian and Slovak Peoples, as They Relate to and Are Affected by the Great European War
Unknown
This historical study examines the long-standing struggle for Bohemian and Slovak sovereignty, framing their national aspirations within the volatile political landscape of the early twentieth century. It serves as a fervent argument for the dissolution of Hapsburg authority in favor of self-determination.

Brain Twister
Randall Garrett
In this satirical mystery, an FBI agent tasked with finding a telepathic spy discovers that the most powerful mind in the country is trapped in a mental institution under the delusion that she is Queen Elizabeth I.

Canada West
Canada. Department of the Interior
Prospective homesteaders and historical observers alike will find this detailed guide to the Canadian frontier an invaluable window into the early twentieth-century promise of prairie settlement.

Casa Grande Ruin: Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891-92, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1896, pages 289-318
Cosmos Mindeleff
The Casa Grande ruin stands as a silent sentinel of the Arizona desert, its weathered adobe walls inviting a precise, scientific look at the architecture of a vanished people. This meticulous report dismantles centuries of myth to reveal the human ingenuity behind one of the American Southwest’s most storied landmarks.

Children's Rights: A Book of Nursery Logic
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
The child is a citizen of the present, not merely a future adult, and deserves a world designed for their stature. True education begins not with books, but with the sanctity of play.

Colouration in Animals and Plants
Alfred Tylor
Nature’s vibrant palette is rarely arbitrary, acting instead as a biological map of an organism’s interior construction. This study argues that structure dictates decoration, revealing how the hidden mechanics of life manifest upon the skin.

Daisy Brooks
Laura Jean Libbey
This melodrama traces the harrowing plight of a guileless orphan caught in the machinations of a jealous socialite. It remains a quintessential artifact of the 19th-century American dime novel, where high-stakes romance and villainous intrigue collide in a race against fate.

Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians
William Henry Jackson
A vast gallery of faces and landscapes, this record captures the vanishing traditions of North American Indigenous peoples as the nineteenth century neared its close. It serves as a haunting, meticulous ledger of a world defined by its rapid transformation and loss.