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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 500 of 714.

The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Youth: Awdeley's 'Fraternitye of vacabondes' and Harman's 'Caveat'
Awdelay, John, active 1559-1577
Before Shakespeare staged his rogues, sixteenth-century reformers mapped their underworld step by step. This volume gathers two primary Tudor treatises to uncover the hidden language, deceptive tricks, and strict hierarchies of early modern vagrants.

The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories
Frank R. Stockton
A collection of lighthearted tales weaves together domestic travel, romantic mishaps, and elaborate tall stories told by the hearth.

The Strength of the Pines
Edison Marshall
A quiet young city dweller travels to the Oregon wilderness to reclaim his father's forgotten homestead, only to find himself embroiled in a deadly feud with a ruthless mountain clan.

The Training of a Forester
Gifford Pinchot
Conservation requires a dedicated corps of disciplined practitioners who treat the wilderness not as a romantic retreat, but as a vital national asset demanding rigorous scientific management and unyielding public service.

The Two Great Republics: Rome and the United States
James Lewis
A study of ancient self-governance shows how economic disparity and partisan hatreds erode free institutions, offering a urgent historical warning to modern democracy.

The Wayfarers
J. C. (John Collis) Snaith
A young nobleman wakes from a night of heavy drinking to find himself ruined, pursued, and forced onto the open roads of eighteenth-century England in disguise.

The Web of the Golden Spider
Frederick Orin Bartlett
A young woman follows a hypnotic vision across the sea, drawing an aimless Bostonian into a deadly hunt for lost South American gold.

The White Cat: Captains All, Book 10
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A sly tale of rustic avarice, where a local inheritance hinges entirely on the lifespan of a two-eyed white cat.

The Winged Men of Orcon: A Complete Novelette
David R. Sparks
Stranded on a alien world, a small crew must destroy a renegade villain's weapon before he obliterates Earth from afar.

The works of Richard Hurd, volume 2 (of 8)
Richard Hurd
A eighteenth-century critic untangles the principles of poetry, drama, and imitation, offering a lucid framework for why imaginative literature moves the human mind.

Use of tobacco among North American Indians
Ralph Linton
Ancient inhabitants of the Americas cultivated distinct wild plants to transform smoke into sacred offerings, diplomatic treaties, and everyday comfort long before European contact.

Warm
Robert Sheckley
A man's unravelling perception breaks down the arbitrary boundary between himself and the universe, opening a void where thought becomes reality and reality vanishes entirely into a self-contained trap.

West of the sun
Edgar Pangborn
Stranded on an alien world, six humans face the choice between repeating Earth's violent history and forging a fragile new future among giant humanoids and pygmy tribes.

Winchester, Painted by Wilfrid Ball
Telford Varley
Long before it was an ancient cathedral city, Winchester was a clearing in a green ocean of primeval forest, where marshland, chalk downs, and river converged to form the natural gateway into England's heartland.

With our army in Palestine
Antony Bluett
A soldier’s eye view of the Middle Eastern theater, this record moves from dusty desert marches to the green fields of the Levant with unvarnished candor.

A Character of the Province of Maryland: Described in four distinct parts
George Alsop
A colorful personal account from seventeenth-century America, this boisterous work details life as an indented servant in Maryland while sketching the lush landscape, local government, and surrounding Native peoples.

A History of Banks for Savings in Great Britain and Ireland
William Lewins
A single illness or missed paycheck once meant ruin for an English laborer. This study traces the long institutional experiment that transformed modest penny savings into a national safety net backed by the British Treasury.

A Nurse's Life in War and Peace
E. C. (Eleanor Constance) Laurence
A dedicated English nurse moves steadily through municipal wards, tropical journeys, and war zones, offering an unvarnished view of early modern medicine.

A Pictorial Booklet on Early Jamestown Commodities and Industries
J. Paul Hudson
In the salt air of early Virginia, survival depended on transforming raw wilderness into utilitarian crafts, matching trial and error against an unyielding new world.

A Voyage Round the World, from 1806 to 1812: In Which Japan, Kamschatka, the Aleutian islands, and the Sandwich Islands were Visited
Archibald Campbell
A young Scottish seaman endures shipwreck in the frigid Aleutians, severe frostbite, and life-altering amputations before finding shelter, recovery, and purpose in early nineteenth-century Hawaii.

Abe and Mawruss: Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter
Montague Glass
A look at the comical, fast-paced world of New York’s garment district reveal how pride, panic, and fierce loyalty drive two unforgettable business partners.

Agent Nine and the Jewel Mystery: A Story of Thrilling Exploits of the "G" Men
Graham M. Dean
A green G-man matches wits with a petty departmental rival, a diamond-smuggling syndicate, and a missing mentor across rain-swept Southern Limited tracks and murky coastal bayous.

All for a Scrap of Paper: A Romance of the Present War
Joseph Hocking
Honor and duty collide with deep personal conscience when a young Cornishman finds his pacifist beliefs tested by the sudden onset of the First World War.

An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will
Albert Taylor Bledsoe
The human mind is not a set of mechanical gears set in motion by external pulls, but an active force capable of originating its own choices without a prior efficient cause.

Antonio Stradivari
Horace Petherick
A master woodworker dispels popular myths to reveal the practical craftsmanship, deliberate choices, and collaborative workshop reality behind history’s most famous violins.

Best Stories from the Best Book: An Illustrated Bible Companion for the Home
James Edson White
Scripture comes alive through a domestic lens, transforming foundational sacred history into a gentle, accessible narrative designed for intergenerational reading around the family home.

Border and Bastille
George A. (George Alfred) Lawrence
A fashionable English novelist sets out for America in 1863 to join the Confederate army, but his grand adventure falls apart in a tangle of treacherous guides, muddy rivers, and Federal prisons.

British Political Leaders
Justin McCarthy
Behind the ornate façade of late-Victorian and Edwardian governance, political power shifts dynamically through individual character, institutional friction, and party maneuver. The true engine of parliamentary life is revealed not in grand doctrine, but in personal temperaments, private networks, and tactical clashes.

By England's Aid
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
In late sixteenth-century Europe, two country-bred brothers leave the quiet fields of Essex for the bloody sieges of Holland, discovering that survival requires courage, wits, and an unshakeable allegiance to home.

Christianity and Progress
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Mechanical mastery and scientific pride cannot shield a civilization from moral collapse when it loses hold of spiritual purpose.

Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of Some North American Marsupials, Insectivores and Carnivores
E. Raymond (Eugene Raymond) Hall
Strict taxonomic rigor meets geographic mapping in a painstaking audit of North American mammalian classifications. Through skull measurements, coat color analysis, and historical literature reviews, ambiguous and misidentified animal specimens are systematically evaluated and corrected.

Corse de Leon
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A youth returns from war to claim his bride, only to be cast into a web of Italian treachery and French court intrigue.

Dorothy's Tour
Evelyn Raymond
A young violin virtuoso embarks on a high-stakes concert tour that brings artistic triumph, personal growth, and clues to a hidden inheritance.

Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885
Various
A mosaic of nineteenth-century thought, this issue spans imperial clashes on the Afghan border, radical theories of land reform, the origins of biological form, and the grueling early days of George Sand.

Essentials of woodworking
Ira Samuel Griffith
Clear, methodological guidance turns raw timber into enduring craft through disciplined tool work, structural joinery, and patient surface finishing.

Euphorion - Vol. I: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance
Vernon Lee
A tragic mismatch between intellectual splendor and moral corruption defined the Italian Renaissance, yielding an art that was serene and a reality that was monstrous.

Eye Spy: Afield with Nature Among Flowers and Animate Things
W. Hamilton (William Hamilton) Gibson
A quiet walk through a meadow becomes a masterclass in observation, revealing how tiny lives turn ordinary grass roots into scenes of grand drama.

Fast as the Wind: A Novel
Nat Gould
An escaped convict chokes out a bloodhound on Dartmoor, flees to the coast under an assumed identity, and confronts the glamorous woman whose hidden crime cost him his freedom.

Fix Bay'nets: The Regiment in the Hills
George Manville Fenn
High in the Himalayan passes, a young officer and his Cockney orderly test their endurance against brutal terrain and hostile hill-tribes.

Four Minute Essays, Volume X
Frank Crane
A spirit of indomitable endurance shines brightest not in times of quiet luxury, but when human lives are thoroughly broken and crushed.

Frances of the Ranges
Amy Bell Marlowe
A sharp-eyed Texas girl rides out to protect her father's ranch, matching wits with border outlaws, greedy treasure-seekers, and the condescension of visiting city folk.

Gems of Poetry, for Girls and Boys
Unknown
A young mind discovers the quiet wonders of nature, the steady comfort of home, and the gentle boundaries of a moral life through verse.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls
Martha Foote Crow
A gifted New England girl turns daily hardship, deep spiritual wrestling, and quiet literary practice into a moral voice that moves an entire nation.

Highway Pirates
Harold Avery
When a schoolboy prank leads to unexpected detention, two young friends stumble into an intricate web of coastal smuggling, hidden passages, and high-stakes inheritance theft.

Holmes' Own Story: In Which the Alleged Multi-murderer and Arch Conspirator Tells of the Twenty-two Tragic Deaths and Disappearances in Which He Is Said to Be Implicated, With Moyamensing Prison Diary Appendix
Herman W. Mudgett
In the shadows of a Philadelphia jail cell, a accused killer writes to save his neck, spinning an intricate web of insurance frauds, double identities, and phantom accomplices to explain away twenty-two missing lives.

"I'll Leave It To You": A Light Comedy In Three Acts
Noël Coward
An extended family learns that sudden financial independence is not a gift handed down from above, but a discipline forged under pressure.

Impressions of Spain
Albert Frederick Calvert
A seasoned traveler captures the spirit of a nation, blending vivid descriptions of ancient landscapes with a pragmatic assessment of its industrial potential at the dawn of the twentieth century.

In a Hollow of the Hills
Bret Harte
In the shadowy, treacherous passes of the California mountains, an honest man's devotion and a stranger's romantic obsession unravel a hidden world of outlaws, buried silver, and double lives.