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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 53 of 714.

The Analysis of Mind
Bertrand Russell
The mind is not a ghostly entity residing within the body, but a collection of physical occurrences and habits. By stripping away traditional metaphysical assumptions, the nature of human thought emerges from the observable data of behavior.

This Giddy Globe
Oliver Herford
This Giddy Globe is a spirited, satirical geography textbook written for the amusement of those who find conventional learning too dry. It presents the world not as a steady, serious stage for human history, but as a flighty, spinning, and often absurd spheroid that refuses to be taken seriously.

Southern Stories: Retold from St. Nicholas
Various
HOOK This collection captures the spirit of the American South through a tapestry of diverse voices, blending historical anecdotes, regional folklore, and the quiet adventures of youth into a vivid portrait of a changing landscape.

The Red Room
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A young man, armed with skepticism and a revolver, spends a single night in a notoriously haunted room to prove that ghosts are nothing more than superstition. He discovers, instead, that some terrors are far more primitive than phantoms.

Stories from the Ballads, Told to the Children
Mary Macgregor
HOOK These pages breathe life into the ancient, wandering songs of minstrelsy, capturing a world where fairy spells, daring rescues, and true love hold sway over the human heart.

English Fairy Tales
Unknown
The door is unlocked, the key is waiting, and a world of giants, talking animals, and foolish mortals lies just beyond the threshold. Step inside to discover the enduring, often mischievous, and occasionally dark heartbeat of the English nursery tradition.

Principles of Orchestration, with Musical Examples Drawn from His Own Works
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov
HOOK This masterclass in sound design demystifies the symphony orchestra, revealing how to blend individual voices into a cohesive, brilliant, and imaginative sonic landscape.

The Aeroplane Speaks. Fifth Edition
H. (Horatio) Barber
A technical manual disguised as a living conversation, this guide brings the early mechanics of flight to life by granting the aeroplane itself a voice to explain the perils of the sky.

The Red Triangle: Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator
Arthur Morrison
A secret society leaves a mark of blood upon its victims, signaling a conspiracy that stretches from the diamond houses of London to the halls of the Admiralty.

Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore
HOOK A lyrical exploration of the soul’s longing for the divine, this work captures the universal dance between human imperfection and the infinite.

Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories
Samuel E. (Samuel Edward) Lowe
The inhabitants of the animal kingdom lead busy, perilous, and wonder-filled lives that mirror the joys and troubles of the human world.

Little Wizard Stories of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
The Land of Oz is a place where even a straw man can dream of adventure, and the simplest stroll often leads to a magical encounter. These charming, bite-sized tales capture the whimsical spirit of a world where kindness and imagination triumph over every obstacle.

The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746): (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.)
J. Pringle (James Pringle) Thomson
These collected primary accounts trace the turbulent decades of the Jacobite risings, charting Scotland’s bloody path from the battlefields of 1689 to the final, crushing defeat of the Stuart cause in 1746.

Amabel Channice
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
The heavy, grey silence of a lonely country house conceals a secret that has defined a mother’s life and distorted her son’s path. This haunting portrait of shame and redemption explores the fragile boundary between duty and truth.

Ruth Fielding Down East
Alice B. Emerson
A resilient young screenwriter travels to the rugged Maine coast, only to discover that her stolen manuscript has fallen into the hands of a mysterious hermit.

Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus
Xenophon
This classic work of biographical fiction explores the making of a legendary ruler, blending historical tradition with philosophical inquiry to examine the virtues required to lead and inspire.

Idylls of the King
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
A vision of Camelot unfolds through a series of lyrical narratives, tracing the rise and inevitable fracturing of an idealistic fellowship under a blameless king. The beauty of a dream meets the harsh friction of human frailty in this enduring work.

The Voyage Out
Virginia Woolf
A young woman journeys to South America, seeking to understand the world beyond her sheltered upbringing. In this transformative travelogue, she finds that life and love are not the neat, predictable affairs her mentors promised.

Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone
G. Harvey (George Harvey) Ralphson
A group of spirited American teenagers travels to the Panama Canal to thwart a shadowy international conspiracy targeting the massive infrastructure of the Gatun Dam. The narrative follows their daring investigative work as they outmaneuver saboteurs in both New York City and the dense jungles of the tropics.

Down the River
Oliver Optic
A young boy and his sister flee the oppressive cruelty of their legal guardians, embarking on a dangerous river voyage to find a life of their own.

Laurence Sterne in Germany: A Contribution to the Study of the Literary Relations of
Harvey W. (Harvey Waterman) Hewett-Thayer
A critical survey of a literary phenomenon, this study maps how an English humorist captured the imagination of a foreign culture, shaping its emotional landscape for decades. It investigates the reception, imitation, and eventual scholarly assessment of a singular voice across the borders of the eighteenth century.

The Confessions of Arsène Lupin
Maurice Leblanc
Master thieves, elaborate ruses, and aristocratic intrigue define a world where justice is settled not by the heavy hand of the law, but by superior wit and theatrical daring.

Messengers of Evil: Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantômas
Pierre Souvestre
A mysterious arch-villain terrorizes Paris, leaving a trail of bodies, forged notes, and ruined lives that outsmart the city's best detectives.

Frances Kane's Fortune
L. T. Meade
This volume presents a collection of moralizing tales centered on the lives of young women facing sudden shifts in fortune, duty, and emotional loyalty. These narratives examine the tension between personal desire and the heavy weight of familial obligation.

Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman
Francis Hopkinson Smith
This collection brings together two distinct narratives exploring the intersection of tradition, honor, and the changing social landscape of early twentieth-century America. These stories offer a quiet, character-focused meditation on the persistence of old-fashioned integrity in a modernizing world.

William Shakespeare
John Masefield
This critical guide traverses the vast landscape of the Shakespearean canon, offering a concise, play-by-play analysis that seeks to uncover the master’s evolving vision and the underlying human truths in his work.

How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits: Embracing an Exposition of the Principles of Good Manners
Samuel R. (Samuel Roberts) Wells
Good manners are the quiet architecture of a well-lived life, revealing the character of the individual through the simple grace of daily habits. This manual serves as a practical blueprint for navigating the complexities of nineteenth-century American social life.

Dio's Rome, Volume 5: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
The arc of the Roman Empire, as seen by a man who lived through its most turbulent shifts, is captured in this sweeping historical record. It is a chronicle of power, betrayal, and the relentless machinery of statecraft.

The Cricket
Marjorie Benton Cooke
HOOK A headstrong, imaginative girl navigates the indifference of her wealthy parents by inventing her own world, eventually finding her match in a war-weary soldier who recognizes her wild spirit.

The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church
A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton) Thompson
The evolution of the English parish church is a story written in stone, where local tradition and liturgical necessity slowly transformed humble, aisleless structures into the soaring, complex edifices we recognize today.

The New Tenant
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A murdered man on the moor, a cottage with a hidden room, and a love story shadowed by suspicion draw a country household into accusation, secrecy, and a trial that seems to leave no room for innocence.

A Little Girl in Old Quebec
Amanda M. Douglas
HOOK Set against the rugged, untamed beauty of early seventeenth-century New France, this story follows a spirited foundling navigating the perils and promises of a nascent colonial society.

The Third Miss Symons
F. M. (Flora Macdonald) Mayor
Henrietta Symons exists as a quiet study in the slow erosion of a spirit by the suffocating customs of her time. Her life is a quiet tragedy of missed connections, domestic duty, and the persistent, unrequited ache for love.

The Boy Scouts of Lenox
Frank V. Webster
The local boys of Lenox form a scouting troop to explore the wilderness, only to find their outdoor adventure intertwined with a quest to recover a stolen family heirloom from a local thief.

Right Ho, Jeeves
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A young man finds himself tangled in a series of farcical social knots, only to rely on his valet’s peerless, if occasionally ruthless, genius to restore order to his quiet, comfortable life.

A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson
A collection of verse that captures the fleeting, vivid reality of a child’s imagination. It transforms the familiar landscape of home and nursery into a vast, enchanted world of private discovery.

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
These retellings distill the complex dramas of the Bard into accessible, linear narratives. By stripping away the dense verse, the collection invites readers to engage directly with the foundational plots of classic Western literature.

The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
A poet’s deep, impassioned love letter to a fractured nation, tracing its journey from the crucible of civil war into the promise of a united, democratic future.

The Gambler
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The spinning wheel offers a dangerous promise of transformation, but for those who stake their lives on the turn of a card, the only certainty is the erosion of the soul.

The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
The story of humanity unfolds here as a single, continuous narrative, tracing life from the cooling of the earth to the aftermath of the Great War. It offers a sweeping vision of our species, unbound by the limitations of national borders.

The Wonder Book of Knowledge: The Marvels of Modern Industry and Invention, the Interesting Stories of Common Things, the Mysterious Processes of Nature Simply Explained
Unknown
This compendium demystifies the mechanisms of the industrial age, offering clear, non-technical explanations for the origins and operations of common objects and modern marvels. It serves as an encyclopedia of "why" and "how.

A War-Time Wooing: A Story
Charles King
A soldier finds his reputation and heart compromised when a duplicitous comrade uses his name to deceive an innocent woman. Amidst the chaos of the Civil War, the lines between duty, romance, and betrayal blur dangerously.

The Wendigo
Algernon Blackwood
The primal terror of the Canadian wilderness takes hold in this unsettling tale, where a hunting party encounters an ancient, malevolent force that dissolves the boundaries between man and myth.

Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis
This portrait of an American real-estate agent in 1920 explores the stifling pressure of social conformity and the quiet, desperate search for meaning within a world of standardized comforts.

Japanese Fairy Tales
Yei Theodora Ozaki
This collection of Japanese folklore invites readers into a world of moral instruction, supernatural wonder, and cultural tradition. Originally compiled at the turn of the twentieth century to introduce Western audiences to the richness of Japanese storytelling, these tales endure because they balance the uncanny…

Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume III
Thomson, A. T., Mrs.
The Jacobite cause was a storm of shifting loyalties and lost dreams, where brilliant courage often met a tragic, inevitable end. This chronicle captures the final, desperate chapters of that romantic and doomed struggle.

Eve's Diary, Complete
Mark Twain
This is a deceptively simple, deeply poignant account of the world’s first couple, told through the eyes of a creature discovering existence, language, and love for the very first time. It is a masterwork of gentle satire and enduring heart.

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A king, betrayed by his queen, vows to marry a new bride each day and execute her at dawn. Only one woman, gifted with the art of storytelling, can delay her own sentence by keeping him suspended in wonder.