The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 425
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 425 of 714.
The Fisher-Boy Urashima
Basil Hall Chamberlain
A gentle act of mercy to a sea creature leads a humble fisherman into an enchanted underwater realm, where three years of joy cost him everything he ever knew.
The Forest Beyond the Woodlands: A Fairy Tale
Mildred Kennedy
A glowing bird leads a seeker through enchanted wildernesses to the threshold of an enduring home.
The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
An American volunteer and his French airman comrade race across a war-torn landscape, carrying crucial intelligence as millions of soldiers clash in the pivotal defense of Paris.
The Gods and Mr. Perrin: A Tragi-Comedy
Hugh Walpole
At an isolated English boarding school, two masters drift into a petty, soul-crushing rivalry that slowly unhinges the older man's sanity.
The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It
George Wharton James
A sheer drop of thousands of feet reveals a labyrinth of colored rock, ancient history, and raw nature carved by the rushing waters of the Colorado.
The Great Adventure: A Play of Fancy in Four Acts
Arnold Bennett
A painfully shy master painter assumes his deceased valet's identity, only to find escape from his own overwhelming fame nearly impossible.
The Harbor Master
Theodore Goodridge Roberts
A remote Newfoundland cove hides a community of wreckers whose fierce leader claims every prize of the sea until a shipwrecked singer and a brave sailor challenge his brutal rule.
The Heart's Kingdom
Maria Thompson Daviess
A world-weary woman flees city cynicism for her Southern hometown, only to confront her own deepest fears about love, class, and spiritual surrender.
The Lighthouse
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
The sea yields no secrets without labor, and even the rocks off Scotland’s coast demand a heroic cost in sweat and courage.
The Mysterious Key and What It Opened
Louisa May Alcott
Old Sir Ralph’s ancient curse promises no quiet for Trevlyn Hall until truth comes out of Trevlyn dust, and a dying lord’s long-hidden secret soon proves the prophecy true.
The Overland Route to the Road of a Thousand Wonders: The Route of the Union Pacific & The Southern Pacific Railroads from Omaha to San Francisco, a Journey of Eighteen Hundred Miles Where Once the Bison & the Indian Reigned
Southern Pacific Company. Passenger Department
Where pioneers once crawled across two thousand miles of dust and hardship, a steel highway now spans the continent in fifty-six luxurious hours.
The Redskins
James Fenimore Cooper
Disguised as a itinerant German pedlar on his own ancestral estate, a returning landlord confronts a secretive tenant revolt aiming to strip his family of their legal property rights.
The Return of the O'Mahony: A Novel
Harold Frederic
An American Civil War deserter impersonates an heir to an Irish estate, claiming the title and winning the devotion of a remote village.
The River Prophet
Raymond S. (Raymond Smiley) Spears
Down the churning brown currents of the Mississippi, a mountain preacher, a runaway wife, and a solitary river observer float into one another’s lives to discover freedom, redemption, and identity.
The romance of Isabel Lady Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
Bound to an extraordinary explorer by love and a gypsy’s prophecy, an Englishwoman spends her life braving tropical fever, desert sands, and bureaucratic exile alongside her famous husband.
The Secret Witness
George Gibbs
A young woman's flight through an empire in collapse.
The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio
N. E. (Nelson Edward) Jones
A wilderness of forest yields to the ax, the plow, and the rifle as a generation of rugged settlers carves a proud, independent commonwealth from the wild American frontier.
The Story of Old Fort Loudon
Charles Egbert Craddock
Over shadowed peaks and deep mountain gaps, a handful of settlers and British soldiers march into the wilderness, unaware that they are walking straight into a deadly trap of imperial ambition and tribal fury.
The Study of Plant Life
Marie Carmichael Stopes
Leaves absorb light, roots draw water, and every seed contains a tiny live engine waiting to hatch. Science becomes an active adventure when observed directly in the garden.
The Third Class at Miss Kaye's: A School Story
Angela Brazil
An overly sheltered girl leaves her family's quiet routine for a lively coastal school, where shared scrapes, sharp rivalries, and unexpected secrets turn a spoiled recluse into a dependable companion.
The Thirteenth Chair: A Play in Three Acts
Bayard Veiller
Ghosts, knives, and dark rooms make for a thrilling parlor game, until a dead man is left sitting in the circle. In The Thirteenth Chair, Bayard Veiller crafts a closed-room mystery where spiritualism meets cold, hard murder.
The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A wanderer searches the globe for three signs of an exalted destiny, only to find every promised miracle waiting in his native village.
The Truth of Christianity: Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion
W. H. (William Harry) Turton
A systematic examination of natural science, human morality, and historical evidence yields a surprisingly rigorous baseline for religious belief. By weighing tough objections with cool, methodical logic, this apologetic survey builds an enduring, commonsense case for faith.
The Visioning: A Novel
Susan Glaspell
A spoiled young woman steps off a golf course to stop a stranger from jumping into a river, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that dismantles her pristine social world.
The Wedding Guest: A Friend of the Bride and Bridegroom
Unknown
The entry into marriage rarely comes with the maturity or self-knowledge needed to sustain it, leaving two independent minds to face the sudden, quiet shock of living as one.
The Young Dragoon: Every Day Life of a Soldier
Alfred W. (Alfred Wilks) Drayson
A young English country lad trades the ploughshare for a sword, exchanging rural obscurity for the glittering uniform, brutal training, and desperate battlefields of the Victorian army.
Their Wedding Journey
William Dean Howells
A middle-aged New York couple turns a delayed honeymoon into an effortless masterclass in the art of observing everyday life.
Theo: A Sprightly Love Story
Frances Hodgson Burnett
A plain girl from a dreary home steps into high society, only to find that winning her heart's desire means risking her own sense of honor.
Thirty years in Madagascar
Thomas T. Matthews
A candid, eyewitness record of Christian mission work in Madagascar, this chronicle details thirty years of building rural churches, navigating political upheaval, surviving French military invasion, and enduring the daily hardships of a rapidly changing island nation.
Through the Mackenzie Basin: A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899
Charles Mair
An expedition pushes deep into Canada’s unceded northern forests, where treaty signers smoke briar pipes in store-bought suits and men track heavy wooden boats until their lines snap against the rocks.
Tom Watson's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 3, May 1905
Various
A reader’s guide to an early twentieth-century political and literary digest.
Travels to Tana and Persia
Giosofat Barbaro
Venetian envoys brave trackless steppes and warring Eastern empires to forge fragile alliances against the Ottoman Turks.
Watch the Sky
James H. Schmitz
They thought they were fabricating an alien threat to line their pockets, until they discovered the lie they told was the terrifying truth.
Watteau
C. Lewis (Charles Lewis) Hind
A delicate painter transforms his own terminal illness into liquid light, capturing the bittersweet transience of human pleasure.
Winefred: A Story of the Chalk Cliffs
S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
A wild child of the Dorset coast must navigate illicit trade, stolen wealth, and her parents' deceptive social ambitions to claim her own path.
With Rifle and Bayonet: A Story of the Boer War
F. S. (Frederick Sadleir) Brereton
A lad driven from home finds his footing in the fires of the veldt, fighting for country and comrades with cool resolve.
Years of Plenty
Ivor John Carnegie Brown
A youth spent in English boarding schools and Oxford quadrangles yields both the thrill of rebellion and the quiet, inevitable acceptance of adult duty.
A Lover's Complaint
William Shakespeare
A grieving young woman sits by a river tearing up old love letters, weeping over the handsome, silver-tongued youth who persuaded her to surrender her virtue and ultimately left her broken.
A Man Obsessed
Alan Edward Nourse
A man pursues his father's alleged killer into the depths of an underground medical facility, only to learn that his murderous compulsion is the telepathic projection of a long-dead madman.
A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1
Kelly Miller
A rigorous statistical dismantling challenges the biased socio-economic theories of the late nineteenth century, exposing how faulty data and flawed logic were used to argue that African Americans were inherently doomed to extinction.
A Syrup of the Bees
F. W. (Francis William) Bain
A fairy tale written for adults, this melancholy Indian legend explores how human beings ruin their own happiness by chasing ideal dreams while ignoring the genuine love already in their hands.
A Traveller in War-Time
Winston Churchill
Cross the Atlantic alongside civilian volunteers, thread the darkened streets of air-raided London, and witness how the total mobilization of Great Britain and France fundamentally reshaped modern democratic society.
A Voyage in a Balloon (1852)
Jules Verne
A lone aeronaut takes to the German skies, only to discover his unexpected passenger is a dangerous fanatic determined to steer them both into eternity.
An essay on the government of children, under three general heads, viz. health, manners, and education
James Nelson
Proper child rearing requires replacing common domestic deceptions with reasoned discipline, tailoring physical care to biological realities, and matching education to a child’s actual social station and natural abilities.
An eye for an eye
Clarence Darrow
A doomed Chicago switchman sits in his jail cell on the eve of his execution, recounting the avalanche of poverty, debt, and desperation that led to his fatal crime.
An Original Belle
Edward Payson Roe
A young woman's resolve to live a meaningful life transforms her from a self-absorbed society belle into a steadying force for the men fighting on both sides of the Civil War.
An outlaw's diary: revolution
Cécile Tormay
A world shatters overnight when a aristocratic order collapses into chaotic street violence. Out of the wreckage of an empire, a writer records the desperate final hours of her homeland.
Austin and His Friends
Frederic Henry Balfour
A lame boy in late-Victorian England finds that physical limitation cannot confine a spirit attuned to invisible beauty. Through gentle hauntings, eccentric neighbors, and a deep devotion to gardens, his life becomes a quiet triumph of the soul over mortal frailties.