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All free summaries — page 562
34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 562 of 711.
Witch Winnie: The Story of a "King's Daughter"
Elizabeth W. (Elizabeth Williams) Champney
A lively group of boarding-school friends discovers that service to others is the most exciting adventure of all. They trade petty rivalries for a shared mission, turning their energy toward rescuing children from urban poverty.
Women in the factory
Adelaide Mary Anderson
This is a chronicle of the first three decades of the British Women’s Factory Inspectorate, documenting how a small, determined group of women transformed industrial safety and worker dignity from 1893 to 1921.
A Comparative View of Religions
Johannes Henricus Scholten
A journey through the history of human belief reveals a steady progression from the helplessness of nature-worship toward the internal, spiritual freedom found in the highest forms of religious life.
A conchological manual
G. B. (George Brettingham) Sowerby
This technical guide provides a systematic foundation for identifying and understanding mollusk shells, bridging the gap between amateur curiosity and rigorous scientific research. It serves as an essential, illustrated reference for the naturalists of the mid-nineteenth century.
A Day Well Spent: A Farce, in One Act
John Oxenford
A runaway apprentice and his fast-talking foreman attempt to abandon their shop for a day of mischief, only to find themselves entangled in a series of increasingly absurd cases of mistaken identity.
A Double Knot
George Manville Fenn
The shadow of a secret marriage haunts two sisters, leading them into a web of social maneuvering, desperate escapes, and a violent collision with a long-buried family past.
A Flight in Spring: In the car Lucania from New York to the Pacific coast and back, during April and May, 1898
J. Harris (John Harris) Knowles
A journey across a continent, told as a private chronicle of camaraderie and discovery at the dawn of the American century.
A Foregone Conclusion
William Dean Howells
A lonely Venetian priest, yearning for a life beyond his stifling vows, pins his fragile hopes on a visiting American woman. This quiet, melancholic drama explores the intersection of longing, cultural misunderstanding, and the painful impossibility of self-reinvention.
A Loyal Little Red-Coat: A Story of Child-life in New York a Hundred Years Ago
Ruth Ogden
In the shadow of the American Revolution, a young Loyalist girl and a runaway circus performer find their lives intertwined, navigating the deep divides of a nation struggling to define its new identity.
A Question of Marriage
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
When a medical diagnosis threatens to define a woman's future, she must navigate the boundary between duty and personal happiness. This story follows two friends—Vanna and Jean—as they encounter love, loss, and the quiet, often overlooked, trials of domestic life.
A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories
Mary Hallock Foote
The stifling heat of the American West acts as a catalyst for hidden truths, forcing characters to confront the shadows of their pasts and the fragility of their current lives.
Across the Plains to California in 1852: Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell
Lodisa Frizell
A pioneer woman records her arduous journey from Illinois to the Pacific in 1852. Her observant, clear-eyed journal captures both the terrifying fragility of life and the immense, beautiful scale of the American frontier.
Adventures of an Angler in Canada, Nova Scotia and the United States
Charles Lanman
This travelogue chronicles a mid-19th-century journey through the rugged landscapes of North America, blending technical angling observations with romantic, meditative reflections on the natural world and the passage of time.
Allegories of Life
Adams, J. S., Mrs.
The moral landscapes of these fables reveal that true growth requires embracing the hardship of the climb, for only at the summit can one find the clarity necessary to navigate life’s deepest valleys.
And Judas Iscariot: Together with other evangelistic addresses
J. Wilbur (John Wilbur) Chapman
A collection of urgent, earnest sermons that frame the Christian life not as a set of rules, but as a direct, transformative relationship with a forgiving Savior.
Arctic Adventures
William Henry Giles Kingston
This narrative follows a young man’s perilous journey into the frozen North in search of a missing brother, offering a vivid, unvarnished look at the realities of 19th-century whaling. It captures the raw, unforgiving majesty of the Arctic and the resilience required to survive its crushing ice and relentless gales.
Artemis to Actaeon, and Other Verses
Edith Wharton
The human heart is a fragile vessel, forever balancing the pull of immortal longing against the relentless, common demands of a mortal life.
Aunt Judith: The Story of a Loving Life
Grace Beaumont
The story follows the spiritual and physical trials of two young friends as they learn to navigate the harshness of others, the onset of tragedy, and the quiet power of selfless faith. It is a portrait of resilience in the face of inevitable sorrow.
Better Dead
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A young Scottish intellectual travels to London, determined to "improve" the world by assassinating its most superfluous citizens, only to find his own violent logic eventually unraveling.
Captain Mansana & Mother's Hands
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
A fiery Italian soldier finds his pride dismantled by a woman’s grace, while a daughter learns that true nobility is written in the calloused skin of a parent’s hands.
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)
Charles Sumner
The legislative record of the post-Civil War era reveals a nation struggling to define the meaning of freedom. Through formal addresses and parliamentary debates, these pages document the urgent, unfinished business of American reconstruction.
Check-list of the Birds of Kansas
Harrison Bruce Tordoff
This detailed reference work catalogs the avian species of Kansas, providing a formal inventory of the state’s bird life as understood by researchers in the mid-1950s.
Chronicles of Chicora Wood
Elizabeth W. Allston (Elizabeth Waties Allston) Pringle
The beauty of a vanished landscape and the wreckage of a social order are distilled into a memoir of a South Carolina childhood, capturing both the refinement of a wealthy rice-planting family and the encroaching ruin of the Civil War.
Cities of the Dawn: Naples - Athens - Pompeii - Constantinople - Smyrna - Jaffa - Jerusalem - Alexandria - Cairo - Marseilles - Avignon - Lyons - Dijon
J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
The world is wide, and its ancient cities hold the echoes of empires long faded. This travelogue serves as a guide through the sun-drenched ruins and bustling streets of a Mediterranean world in transition.
Connie Morgan in the Fur Country
James B. (James Beardsley) Hendryx
In the unforgiving expanse of the Canadian North, a young wilderness scout and his indigenous partner navigate treacherous landscapes and criminal outlaws to bring justice to the frontier.
Crimes of Charity
Konrad Bercovici
This piercing exposé uncovers the brutal machinery of early 20th-century New York social services, where the plight of the city’s most vulnerable is treated as a commodity for administrative efficiency and bureaucratic indifference.
Daisy Thornton
Mary Jane Holmes
A young woman’s impulsive decision to annul her marriage triggers a cascade of regret, testing the resilience of love and the limits of forgiveness.
Dodo Wonders--
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A restless, indomitable socialite navigates the fading glamour of the British aristocracy as the First World War dismantles her world, forcing her to confront the absurdity of her own privilege.
Eight Sermons on the Priesthood, Altar, and Sacrifice
Mayow Wynell Mayow
These sermons serve as an impassioned, scholarly defense of the traditional Catholic understanding of the ministry, arguing that the Church of England holds a valid, historical priesthood despite contemporary confusion.
Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family
George Manville Fenn
This is a story of how rigid, judgmental moralizing can dismantle a family from within, leaving its members to navigate the ruin of their own making.
Fanshawe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A scholar and a rogue compete for the heart of a young woman in this moody, atmospheric tale of collegiate life and unexpected danger.
"Forward, March": A Tale of the Spanish-American War
Kirk Munroe
This stirring piece of turn-of-the-century fiction follows a young man’s journey from a quiet life in New Orleans to the front lines of the Spanish-American War, capturing the fervor and idealism of 1898.
Friarswood Post Office
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A fragile boy’s slow decline and the arrival of a destitute stranger transform a struggling village household. Through sorrow and sacrifice, a family finds that true strength is forged in the quiet acceptance of one’s lot.
H.M.S. ----
John Graham Bower
This work offers a mosaic of life within the British Navy during the First World War, capturing the intimate rhythm of sailors, officers, and the machinery of conflict. It functions less as a traditional novel and more as a series of interconnected sketches, vignettes, and poetic interludes that paint a portrait of…
Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
This artifact serves as a time capsule, preserving the varied literary diet, educational pastimes, and earnest social tone of an American childhood in the late nineteenth century.
Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
Adventure, history, and moral instruction fill the pages of this Victorian-era children’s periodical, offering a vibrant window into the pastimes and education of nineteenth-century American youth.
Healthful Sports for Boys
A. R. (Alfred Rochefort) Calhoun
For the young reader seeking to master the outdoors, this guide turns every season into a playground, offering practical blueprints for building kites, managing sail boats, and organizing a neighborhood baseball club.
Holinshed's Chronicles, vol. 2 of 6, slice 11 of 12: England, 1327-1377, Edward III
Raphael Holinshed
This chronicle captures the tumultuous reign of Edward III, a transformative half-century defined by the Hundred Years' War, territorial ambition, and the shifting power dynamics between a warrior king, his lords, and a restless parliament.
Horses
Roger Pocock
The horse is not merely a beast of burden but a creature governed by its own complex instincts, shaped by the wild range, and inextricably linked to the history of human survival.
How to swim
James H. Sterrett
The water is not an enemy to be feared, but a medium to be mastered; this guide provides the essential mechanics for anyone seeking to navigate the aquatic world with grace and ease.
Husks
Marion Harland
A restless young woman trapped in a marriage of convenience seeks the fulfillment she cannot find in the hollow artifice of high society. Her journey through pride, grief, and eventual spiritual transformation marks the passage from a life of mere appearance to one of substance.
Hydesville: The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism
Thomas Olman Todd
HOOK A simple wooden farmhouse in 1848 becomes the epicenter of a global movement when two young sisters discover they can communicate with an invisible, rapping presence.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
Mack Reynolds
In a city of exiles and fugitives, two strangers share a drink and a casual conversation that strips away the veneer of humanity. This brief encounter reveals the true, chilling nature of their mission on Earth.
In Kedar's Tents
Henry Seton Merriman
In the shadow of a volatile Spanish civil war, a quick-witted Englishman becomes entangled in a dangerous web of political conspiracy, secret letters, and a love that tests the limits of loyalty.
Indians of the Mesa Verde
Don Watson
The ancient cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde built a civilization of stone and spirit, only to vanish into the desert haze, leaving behind a silent, enduring mystery of the American Southwest.
Isabel Clarendon, Vol. 1 (of 2)
George Gissing
HOOK A refined widow of the English upper class finds her carefully ordered life disrupted by an intense, melancholic stranger who has retreated into the countryside.
John Bull, Junior
Max O'Rell
An immigrant teacher navigates the peculiar landscape of the English classroom, offering a witty, observant guide to the misadventures of learning a language and the irrepressible spirit of the British schoolboy.
John Vytal: A Tale of the Lost Colony
William Farquhar Payson
This atmospheric historical novel breathes life into the enigma of the Roanoke colony, blending the harsh realities of colonial survival with a haunting, romantic search for meaning amidst an enduring historical mystery.