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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 570 of 714.

Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century
Montague Massey
This evocative memoir preserves the vanished atmosphere of a colonial city, tracing the physical and social evolution of Calcutta through the eyes of a resident who witnessed over half a century of change.

Rilla of the Lighthouse
Grace May North
A young woman raised in the isolation of a coastal lighthouse discovers her past and future, navigating the transition from a solitary life on the sea to the wider, complex world of society and self-discovery.

Salem Chapel, v. 2/2
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A young minister faces a crisis of faith and reputation when his family’s private scandal threatens his position at a provincial chapel. This drama of duty, social pressure, and maternal devotion explores the fragile boundaries between a preacher’s public life and his hidden heart.

Saxe Holm's Stories: First Series
Helen Hunt Jackson
These quiet, observant tales explore the moral strength and emotional landscapes of nineteenth-century women, mapping the intersections of duty, love, and the hidden inner lives of those navigating a changing world.

Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi
Jefferson Davis
An urgent and formal defense of political principle, these collected addresses capture a pivotal moment when the American Union teetered on the brink of fracture.

Sprays of Shamrock
Clinton Scollard
A collection of lyrical verse, these poems celebrate the landscape and folklore of Ireland through a lens of deep affection and nostalgic longing.

Stories by Foreign Authors: German
Unknown
This collection gathers four distinct German literary works, ranging from historical reverence to the surreal, unified by their focus on human morality, loss, and the consequences of our choices.

The Acorn-Planter: A California Forest Play (1916)
Jack London
The Acorn-Planter is a visionary drama about the cyclical nature of human conflict and the ultimate necessity of choosing nurture over destruction. It portrays the rise and fall of civilizations through the lens of a recurring struggle between the life-giving wisdom of the "acorn-planter" and the short-sighted…

The Adventure League
Hilda T. Skae
HOOK A group of spirited Highland children forms a secret society to clear an innocent friend’s name when he is falsely accused of a post-office robbery.

The Altar Fire
Arthur Christopher Benson
This meditative diary fiction explores the silent, internal landscape of a man grappling with grief, spiritual exhaustion, and the profound, often painful search for meaning in a world that feels increasingly fragmented and obscure.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 50, December, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures a pivotal moment in American intellectual history, offering a vibrant mosaic of wartime political discourse, travel memoir, literary criticism, and creative verse. It serves as a profound record of a nation mid-struggle.

The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla
Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton
The first battle on the American continent involving horses, the engagement at Cintla stands as a pivotal, yet often obscured, collision between Spanish forces and the native Mayan-speaking populations of Tabasco.

The Boy With the U. S. Foresters
Francis Rolt-Wheeler
HOOK This narrative follows a young man’s induction into the early U.S. Forest Service, where he learns that protecting the wilderness requires more grit, diplomacy, and endurance than any classroom could provide.

The British State Telegraphs: A Study of the Problem of a Large Body of Civil Servants in a Democracy
Hugo Richard Meyer
State-run industries often promise efficiency but frequently deliver political gridlock and financial deficits. This examination dissects the structural failures inherent in the nationalization of the British telegraph system during the late nineteenth century.

The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304
D. J. (Dudley Julius) Medley
This historical survey examines the high-stakes friction between medieval popes and emperors, charting the Church’s rise as a dominant political force and the eventual fracturing of that supreme authority.

The Church on the changing frontier
Helen Olive Belknap
This account documents the challenges of maintaining religious life on the American frontier, where vast landscapes and sparse populations transformed the traditional parish into a difficult, scattered mission.

The Church Year and Kalendar
John Dowden
The intricate history of the Christian calendar reveals how early communities organized their worship, marking the rhythm of their faith through ancient observances, evolving fasts, and the contentious debate over the timing of Easter.

The Cleverdale Mystery
W. A. Wilkins
Ambition and corruption entwine in a small New York town, where a powerful political machine demands the sacrifice of innocence to fuel its own survival.

The Colonel of the Red Huzzars
John Reed Scott
A restless American officer stumbles into the intrigue of a European throne, finding his destiny intertwined with a beautiful Princess and a long-hidden royal lineage. This swashbuckling tale of love and duty balances high-stakes diplomacy with the sharp edge of a sword.

The Corner House Girls on Palm Island
Grace Brooks Hill
Four spirited sisters find themselves far from home when a tropical boating excursion turns into a desperate island survival story.

The Coxswain's Bride
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
The sea is a stage for both salvation and catastrophe, where the courage of the lifeboatman meets the fragile hope of the destitute. Through storms and urban winters, lives are anchored by faith and the quiet, persistent work of charity.

The Critic and the Drama
George Jean Nathan
The critic is the self-appointed chaperone of the arts, an egotist tasked with measuring the distance between a playwright’s ambition and the audience’s capacity for wonder. This work serves as an uncompromising manifesto on the mechanics of theater and the responsibilities of those who stand in judgment of it.

The Diatomaceæ of Philadelphia and Vicinity
Charles S. (Charles Sumner) Boyer
These minute, intricate organisms reveal a hidden architecture of the natural world, serving as both indicators of ecological health and marvels of biological geometry. This foundational survey brings the microscopic life of a specific region into sharp, cataloged focus.

The Electronic Mind Reader: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story
Harold L. (Harold Leland) Goodwin
When a mysterious, mind-altering technology begins targeting the brilliant scientists at the Spindrift research center, two young friends must use their own amateur radio ingenuity to expose a dangerous, invisible enemy.

The Evolution of "Dodd": A pedagogical story giving his struggle for the survival of the fittest, tracing his chances, his changes, and how he came out
William Hawley Smith
The struggle for an individual to find their way in a rigid world is rarely as honest, messy, or hard-won as in this narrative of a boy fighting the very institutions designed to shape him.

The Further Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Under-Graduate: Being a Continuation of "The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman"
Cuthbert Bede
The further adventures of a naive Oxford student offer a lighthearted, episodic look at the trials, escapades, and social learning curve of nineteenth-century university life.

The geography and geology of south-eastern Egypt
John Ball
This technical survey meticulously documents the rugged, arid terrain of South-Eastern Egypt, capturing a landscape defined by its extreme geology and the resilience of its nomadic inhabitants.

The Glory of Ippling
Helen M. Urban
A galactic prince attempts to "civilize" Earth using his family’s proprietary cultural equation, only to find that our chaotic appetite for spectacle and consumerism defies all logic. This satirical short story explores the arrogance of colonialism through the eyes of a bumbling, overconfident alien aristocrat.

The Golden Chimney: A Boy's Mine
Elizabeth Gerberding
A desperate boy hunts for a fortune in the soot and brick of an abandoned San Francisco smelting plant, discovering that hidden gold is often accompanied by dangerous secrets.

The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
Cleland Boyd McAfee
The English Bible stands as a singular monument, bridging the gap between ancient history and the modern literary mind. Its profound legacy remains etched into the very foundation of Western thought and language.

The Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales
Mayne Reid
An American officer finds himself caught in the brutal, shifting landscapes of the Mexican-American War, where survival demands as much cunning as courage. He navigates a world of guerrillas, romance, and sudden, lethal encounters.

The Inner Flame: A Novel
Clara Louise Burnham
A struggling artist and a devoted, plain-spoken woman find unexpected sanctuary on a remote island, where the quiet rhythms of nature mend their fractured lives.

The Ladies Lindores, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
The arrival of a young man at his family estate awakens long-buried secrets and tests the fragile peace of a noble household. A daughter’s forced marriage and a mother’s hidden guilt collide when a ghost from the past returns.

The Magical Land of Noom
Johnny Gruelle
When a pair of children build a makeshift flying machine and drift to the moon, they trigger a chaotic, whimsical odyssey that pulls their entire family into a battle against a sour, shape-shifting magician.

The Men of the Moss-Hags: Being a history of adventure taken from the papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
A historical adventure set against the brutal religious persecutions of 17th-century Scotland, this narrative explores the courage of those who defied the Crown to uphold the Covenant.

The Mermaid of Druid Lake, and Other Stories
Charles Weathers Bump
A lonely park-goer discovers a mermaid in a city lake, and a series of lighthearted urban capers unfolds across turn-of-the-century Baltimore.

The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work
Allan Hoben
A guide to mentoring youth, this work frames the boy’s development as a vital, primitive force that the modern church must harness through companionship, active play, and social engagement to foster true character.

The Mountain Divide
Frank H. (Frank Hamilton) Spearman
The relentless expansion of the American frontier demands a heavy toll of grit, and for the young men building the rails, survival is the only true measure of success. In this rugged landscape, the code of the West is written in iron, telegraph wire, and blood.

The Otterbein Hymnal: For Use in Public and Social Worship
Edmund S. (Edmund Simon) Lorenz
A collection of sacred song, this volume gathers the voices of centuries into a single, cohesive manual for the faithful. It serves as a bridge between the rigorous, stately traditions of the past and the more intimate, rhythmic expressions of the late nineteenth century.

The Pansy Magazine, January 1886
Various
This mid-winter periodical offers a window into the earnest, industrious, and deeply devout spirit of 1880s American youth culture.

The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote
Charles Dudley Warner
To understand the genius of Shakespeare, one must step into the muddy, vibrant streets of the sixteenth century and meet the people who first filled the wooden playhouses of London.

The quest of Iranon
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A wandering singer seeks his forgotten childhood home, clinging to a beautiful, elusive vision of a city that may exist only in the depths of his own heart.

The right hand
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
Man’s dominion over the physical world relies upon the hand, yet the universal preference for the right remains an enduring mystery of human development, challenging our understanding of both anatomy and history.

The Romance of the Canoness: A Life-History
Paul Heyse
A quiet, reflective narrative traces the profound and unlikely bond between a struggling tutor and a woman who has forsaken her aristocratic status to live among the poor.

The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck
Edward Stratemeyer
The Rover boys find themselves in the high-stakes world of Texas oil prospecting, where they must outwit long-standing rivals and navigate the dangerous uncertainty of the frontier.

The Secret of the Sundial: Madge Sterling Series, #3
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
A teenage sleuth follows her intuition into a decaying mansion, only to uncover a family mystery linked to a long-lost fortune and a wayward son.

The Story of a New York House
H. C. (Henry Cuyler) Bunner
This narrative traces the rise and eventual dissolution of a prominent family’s legacy, mirrored in the life and decay of their grand Manhattan home. It serves as a poignant record of a city’s relentless, encroaching transformation.

The Story of Francis Cludde
Stanley John Weyman
A young man is thrust from his tranquil home into the dangerous political crosscurrents of Tudor England, where he must protect noble refugees from the reach of a ruthless religious regime.