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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 439 of 714.

"Swingin round the cirkle"
David Ross Locke
This satirical work offers a searing, caustic look at the wreckage of American politics during the Reconstruction era. It remains a singular artifact of how humor was weaponized to expose the hypocrisy and moral rot of a defeated political faction.

The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People
John R. (John Randolph) Dos Passos
Great power, common ancestry, and the shared ideals of the English-speaking world demand a formal, permanent political union to ensure the future of global civilization. This vision for a unified Anglo-Saxon future defines a critical moment at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 56, June, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A vibrant, multifaceted snapshot of the American mind at a pivotal moment, this collection captures a nation struggling to define itself through the lens of nature, art, and the furnace of civil conflict.

The Beach of Dreams: A Romance
H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole
This story of survival and transformation follows a woman cast away on a desolate island, where she discovers that the harshness of the wild is less alienating than the rigid conventions of her own society.

The Boy Travellers in Australasia: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to the Sandwich, Marquesas, Society, Samoan, and Feejee Islands
Thomas Wallace Knox
Two young travelers embark on a wide-ranging expedition through the Pacific Islands and Australia, documenting the geography, history, and customs of the region for a curious Victorian audience.

The Camp Fire Girls Go Motoring
Hildegard G. Frey
A group of young women embark on a cross-country motoring trip, only to find themselves ensnared in a web of mistaken identities, stolen trunks, and mysterious pursuers. This lively tale follows the Winnebago Camp Fire Girls as they navigate the unpredictable roads of the early twentieth century.

The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
Charles Dudley Warner
A collection of witty, observant essays and travel sketches that find profound charm in gardening failures, domestic pets, and the eccentricities of rural Nova Scotia.

The Conflict
David Graham Phillips
A restless heiress navigates the suffocating constraints of her social class in a changing industrial landscape, ultimately seeking a life of purpose beyond the traditional expectations of marriage and domesticity.

The Eve of the French Revolution
Edward J. (Edward Jackson) Lowell
The French Revolution did not arrive as a sudden bolt of lightning, but as the inevitable collapse of a social and political structure that had been rotting from within for nearly a century.

The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 2: Psalms XXXIX.-LXXXIX
Alexander Maclaren
This study explores the ancient songs of Israel, mapping the landscape of human suffering and the persistence of hope when God feels distant.

The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 3: Psalms XC.-CL
Alexander Maclaren
This commentary serves as a meditative bridge between ancient Hebrew poetry and the heart of the seeker, exploring how the final collection of Psalms addresses the endurance of faith through life’s inevitable trials. It seeks to uncover the enduring relevance of these sacred songs, framing them not as relics, but…

The Firefly of France
Marion Polk Angellotti
An ordinary New Yorker finds himself entangled in a high-stakes web of espionage, romance, and wartime intrigue after a chance encounter at a hotel. What begins as a simple mystery quickly transforms into a dangerous journey toward the front lines of World War I.

The Four Roads
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Four roads cut through the Sussex landscape, binding together a village of farmers, preachers, and soldiers caught in the inexorable machinery of the Great War.

The Front Yard, and Other Italian Stories
Constance Fenimore Woolson
This collection of sketches and tales captures the quiet, often melancholy lives of Americans abroad, mapping the intersection of wandering souls and the timeless, unyielding landscapes of Italy.

The German Spy System from Within
Anonymous
Germany’s clandestine efforts to undermine its neighbors from within are exposed as a pervasive, systematic, and long-standing threat to British security. This urgent warning demands a more aggressive response from the government during wartime.

The Girl from the Marsh Croft
Selma Lagerlöf
A young woman’s act of quiet integrity unravels a web of secrets in this collection of stories, where the boundaries between rural harshness and moral redemption blur.

The Hills of Refuge: A Novel
Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben
A man sacrifices his future to shield a disgraced brother, only to find redemption in the humble, rural life he sought to escape. This is a story of shifting identities, moral exhaustion, and the quiet weight of family secrets.

The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, Part 35
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
This volume follows the iconic knight and his squire as they leave the comfort of a ducal palace, only to find that their reputation—and a fraudulent sequel—has arrived at their destination before them. It is a profound meditation on identity, authorship, and the burden of fame.

The History Teacher's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 9, May, 1910
Various
This record provides a window into the professional landscape of American history education at the turn of the twentieth century. It serves as a vital artifact of pedagogical theory and academic networking from 1910.

The Horse Shoe: The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil, Showing How the Horse-Shoe Came to Be a Charm against Witchcraft
Edward G. Flight
The legend of a saint who bested the devil by turning his forge into a courtroom and his hammer into an instrument of supernatural justice remains a curious, enduring piece of folklore.

The Huge Hunter
Edward Sylvester Ellis
The sight of a giant mechanical man striding across the plains strikes terror into the hearts of men who have only ever known the slow, steady pace of the wilderness.

The Legends of the Iroquois
Unknown
The legends of the Iroquois offer a window into a world where the natural and the supernatural are woven into the very fabric of the forest.

The Little Red Foot
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
In the shadow of the American Revolution, a hardened scout and a spirited Scottish woman find themselves bound together by love and the brutal, shifting loyalties of the frontier.

The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories
Neil Munro
The pipes carry the weight of seven generations, a haunting call to ancient feuds and long-forgotten departures. To hear the true music is to know the ache of a world that can never be recovered.

The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat
Janet Aldridge
A summer vacation on a houseboat turns into a test of nerves and resourcefulness as a group of young women navigates unpredictable waters, a local mystery, and a rival group of boys.

The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Pacific
John Henry Goldfrap
A pair of young wireless operators face treacherous storms, man-eating sharks, and jungle outlaws while helping a millionaire hunt for a missing brother in the South Pacific.

The Principles of the Art of Conversation
J. P. (John Pentland) Mahaffy
Conversation is an art of human connection that feels effortless when performed perfectly, yet thrives on deliberate principles. It is not merely the exchange of facts, but a social grace that can be cultivated by anyone willing to study its underlying mechanics.

The Real Latin Quarter
F. Berkeley (Frank Berkeley) Smith
The Latin Quarter is a world unto itself, a vibrant neighborhood where starving artists, devoted lovers, and eccentric wanderers collide in a perennial pursuit of beauty, art, and romance.

The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 1
J. H. (Joseph Holt) Ingraham
A curious traveler drifts from the North to the Mississippi, capturing the vibrant and unsettling spirit of the American South-West through a series of observant, epistolary dispatches.

The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 6, February, 1835
Various
This vibrant window into 1835 captures the intellectual pulse of the American South, blending historical inquiry, literary critique, and the era’s restless pursuit of progress and moral self-improvement.

The Story of Books
Gertrude Burford Rawlings
Before the digital age, human knowledge lived and breathed through the physical labor of scribes, the slow evolution of the printing press, and the careful preservation of rare, ink-stained pages.

The Story of the Soil
Cyril G. (Cyril George) Hopkins
Scientific inquiry meets the American agricultural landscape in a narrative that blends human drama with the rigorous, often overlooked, mechanics of soil chemistry.

The Strand Magazine, Vol. 01, Issue 02, February 1891: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
The Victorian era pulses through this illustrated monthly, capturing the spirit of a world caught between rigid social observation and a growing appetite for rapid, international storytelling. It is an eclectic assembly of voices, offering a vivid time capsule of late 19th-century culture.

The tale of old Mr. Crow
Arthur Scott Bailey
A self-proclaimed outlaw and neighborhood nuisance, a boisterous crow spends his summers outwitting a frustrated farmer, only to find himself challenged by a clever newcomer who threatens his long-held status.

The Three Eyes
Maurice Leblanc
A scientist’s desperate breakthrough inadvertently unmasks a cosmic secret, pulling his family into a lethal struggle against opportunistic predators. This speculative mystery blends early twentieth-century science fiction with a tense, high-stakes hunt for a world-altering formula.

The Three Perils of Man
James Hogg
A wild, sprawling Border romance, this narrative weaves together history, dark folklore, and the eccentricities of human nature in a singular, unpredictable Scottish tapestry. It captures the rugged spirit of the fourteenth-century marches through a lens of supernatural mystery and earthy, often biting, humor.

The Tipster: 1901, From "Wall Street Stories"
Edwin Lefevre
The lure of the ticker is a siren song that promises wealth but delivers only ruin. This cautionary tale follows a man who abandons his steady life for the hollow thrill of speculation.

The Unknown Quantity: A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales
Henry Van Dyke
The hidden currents of human existence—those unmeasurable, mysterious forces that shift our paths—are the focus of this collection. These tales, blending romantic sentiment with moral inquiry, trace the unseen variables that dictate the shape of a life.

The Violet Book
Unknown
A delicate, fragrant anthology, this collection gathers centuries of verse dedicated to the violet, exploring the flower’s enduring role as a symbol of modesty, memory, and the arrival of spring.

The Wilderness Castaways
Dillon Wallace
Two boys find themselves stranded in the frozen Canadian wilderness after being swept out to sea, and must rely on their grit and growing friendship to survive the long, perilous winter.

The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island
Roger T. (Roger Thompson) Finlay
HOOK Two shipwrecked teenagers and their mentor master a wild island through science and ingenuity, turning a desperate survival situation into an expansive, methodical exploration of their mysterious new home.

The World's Great Sermons, Volume 06: H. W. Beecher to Punshon
Unknown
These sermons capture the cadence and conviction of late nineteenth-century pulpit oratory, exploring the intersection of human nature, moral accountability, and the promise of the divine.

The Yoke of the Thorah
Henry Harland
This portrait of a young man trapped between his heart’s desire and the iron laws of his heritage is a haunting, psychological study of the conflict between inherited identity and individual longing. It is a story of how faith, when distorted by superstition and ancestral pressure, can become a crushing weight.

Toilers of Babylon: A Novel
B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon
A young man’s devotion to a woman outside his social caste sparks a bitter family estrangement, leading to a long-delayed reconciliation that bridges the divide between the wealthy and the working poor.

Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo
René Caillié
A solitary traveler assumes a false identity to cross the desert, enduring profound hardship to reach a city that had long remained a fatal mystery to European explorers.

Up the Chimney
Shepherd Knapp
The magic of Christmas Eve comes alive through a play that invites children to step directly into the story, transforming their own hearth into a gateway to the North Pole.

Verdi
Thomas Tapper
This brief, interactive biography traces the life of a legendary composer, following his journey from a music-obsessed village boy to an internationally celebrated master of opera.

Work for Women
George J. Manson
Finding meaningful employment in the late nineteenth century required navigating a complex landscape of social barriers, gendered expectations, and limited training opportunities. This practical manual offers a pragmatic, unsentimental guide to the trades and professions available to women during a time of…