The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 630
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 630 of 714.
Siam: Its Government, Manners, Customs, &c
N. A. (Noah A.) McDonald
A firsthand observer delivers an honest, systematic view of nineteenth-century Siamese culture, religion, and governance.
Skinner's Dress Suit
Henry Irving Dodge
A small lie born of marital pride spirals into a life-changing lesson in personal projection when a timid cashier invests in a tuxedo.
Sophia: A Romance
Stanley John Weyman
A headstrong young heiress flees an arranged marriage for a charming rogue, only to discover that the world of Georgian England is far more dangerous, and true honor far rarer, than her romantic dreams suggested.
Stan Lynn: A Boy's Adventures in China
George Manville Fenn
A English youth faces fire, water, and betrayal along the riverways of turn-of-the-century China, discovering that courage is less about wielding a rifle than staying grounded when adults lose their heads.
"Sterminator Vesevo" (Vesuvius the great exterminator): Diary of the Eruption of April 1906
Matilde Serao
As ash falls over the Bay of Naples, a writer steps onto frozen rivers of stone to record the quiet survival of those who remain.
Tales for Christmas Eve
Rhoda Broughton
The veil between the living and the dead grows thin when the candles flicker low. These accounts explore the intersection of domestic life and the inexplicable, where the certainty of Victorian comfort is fractured by the uncanny.
Tales for Fifteen
James Fenimore Cooper
Two cautionary tales explore how young women navigate the perils of romantic delusion, contrasting the pitfalls of unchecked sentimentality with the quiet dignity of a devout, unyielding devotion.
Tales of a Poultry Farm
Clara Dillingham Pierson
An urban schoolteacher moves his family to a run-down farm, restores his health, and wins over the farm's anxious, highly opinionated flock of poultry through patient, attentive care.
The Abandoned Farmer
Sydney Herman Preston
City life can break a young family's spirit, but moving to the country to save a child's health turns out to be a hilarious exercise in trial, error, and financial improvisation.
The Architecture of the North Louisiana River Parishes, Volume 1: Ouachita Parish
Louisiana Tech University. Department of Architecture
A geographic landscape dictates the shape of human lives and the structures built to protect them. This architectural survey reveals how a single river split a Louisiana parish into distinct worlds of timber, brick, and iron.
The Ashiel mystery
Marion Bryce
A wealthy aristocrat is shot dead in his Highland estate, leaving a trail of fabricated footprints and a family tangled in secrets. Detective Gimblet must trace the single overlooked flaw in a murderer's careful design.
The binding of the Nile and the new Soudan
Sidney Cornwallis Peel
The Nile's taming and the transformation of the Soudan under British rule.
The Boy Scout Camera Club
G. Harvey (George Harvey) Ralphson
In the rugged mountains of the American South, a company of city-bred Boy Scouts uses cameras, woodcraft, and quiet grit to outwit a desperate gang of kidnappers and save a child.
The Boy Scouts Through the Big Timber
Carter, Herbert, active 1909-1917
Lost in the Rocky Mountain foothills, a fat and clumsy tenderfoot must learn to survive on his own while his fellow Boy Scouts race against time, wild beasts, and treacherous timber thieves to rescue him.
The Buttoned Sky
Robert W. Krepps
A young miner named Revel wakes in a bleak future to discover that a single blow from his pickax can destroy the hovering, glowing globes worshiped as gods, sparking a violent revolution that shatters a feudal system enforced by gun-toting squires and six-legged alien beasts.
The Caged Lion
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A timid Scottish noble comes of age under the tutelage of two allied kings, trading a coward’s sanctuary for the burdens of true manhood.
The Case of the Registered Letter
Auguste Groner
A disgraced man uses his own suicide to frame a rigid engineering executive for murder, leaving an unassuming Viennese detective to untangle a dark plot of judicial pride and delayed vengeance.
The Chinese Kitten
Edna A. Brown
A quiet, golden portrait of New England childhood that captures the extraordinary weight of small everyday choices.
The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments
E. E. (Ernest Edward) Holmes
Rooted in the ancient history of the Church of England, Ernest Edward Holmes clarifies the institutional identity, essential scriptures, and foundational sacraments that define traditional English Anglo-Catholic theology.
The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch
Howard Roger Garis
A city boy and his sister set off for a summer on a Montana cattle ranch, where simple curiosity turns a wide-open landscape into an endless playground.
The Empty Sack
Basil King
A quiet, compassionate study of what happens when financial pressure tests the limits of human integrity and family devotion.
The English Rogue: Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, and Other Extravagants, Comprehending the most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes: The Third Part
Richard Head
A pregnant wife fabricates a tale of black cravings to hide her child’s true parentage, while innkeepers, pickpockets, and privateers turn every human encounter into a profitable swindle.
The Exiles and Other Stories
Richard Harding Davis
Men and women flee their pasts, clash over honor and love, and risk everything in strange lands or quiet drawing rooms.
The Experiences of a Bandmaster
John Philip Sousa
Behind the stately façade of American high culture lies a vibrant, unpredictable world where a bandmaster must navigate temperamental locomotives, sudden Blackouts, and vanishing musicians with equal poise.
The Game-Birds of the Coasts and Lakes of the Northern States of America: A full account of the sporting along our sea-shores and inland waters, with a comparison of the merits of breech-loaders and muzzle-loaders
Robert Barnwell Roosevelt
An impassioned defense of wild game conservation framed as a technical manual, this nineteenth-century sporting guide champions sustainable hunting practices while evaluating the emerging technology of the shotgun.
The Goddess of Reason: A Drama in Five Acts
Mary Johnston
A wild Breton peasant girl and a doomed aristocrat clash across the bloody divide of the French Revolution, bound by a fierce love that brings them together only at the river’s brink.
The Golden Boys and Their New Electric Cell
L. P. (Levi Parker) Wyman
Two inventive brothers in rural Maine devise a revolutionary battery cell, only to find themselves hunted by opportunistic local rivals and ruthless kidnappers.
The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics
H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock
A small-town summer shifts between diamond dust and river water as six dependable boys navigate rivalries, stolen clothes, and a local mystery.
The High Place: A Comedy of Disenchantment
James Branch Cabell
A nobleman who dreams of absolute beauty and holiness awakens a legendary princess, only to find that securing his highest ideals delivers none of the fulfillment he expected.
The history of Bannock County, Idaho
A. C. (Arthur Charles) Saunders
A record of regional growth, Arthur C. Saunders’s history captures the transformation of southeastern Idaho from a rugged, isolated wilderness into a bustling network of rail lines, farms, and modern civic institutions.
The Holladay case
Burton Egbert Stevenson
When a prominent New York financier is found dead at his desk, suspicion falls immediately on his daughter, leaving a young law clerk to unravel a web of deceit, altered identities, and hidden family secrets.
The Honeymoon: A comedy in three acts
Arnold Bennett
A newlywed English aviator and his charming bride find their quiet seaside escape shattered on their very first day of marriage when professional duty, overbearing parents, and an absurd legal mistake threaten their future together.
The Honour of the Clintons
Archibald Marshall
A landed English family's cherished reputation is put to the test when a high-society theft, a quiet blackmail scheme, and a tragic death threaten to unravel their gilded world from within.
The Invention of Typography: A Brief Sketch of the Invention of Printing and How it Came About
Frederick W. (Frederick William) Hamilton
The invention of typography, a cornerstone of modern civilization, is shrouded in debate. This book challenges the Gutenberg legend, arguing for a Dutch inventor and placing the story in the broader context of 15th-century Europe.
The Knave of Diamonds
Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
A wild heart will break or bend under the hand of the only man he respects.
The Last Tenant
B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon
A spectral cat guides an unsuspecting suburban husband into a web of medical villainy and forgotten identity.
The Leech
Robert Sheckley
A dormant extraterrestrial organism drops onto a New York farm and begins devouring everything it touches, growing larger and more insatiable with every attempt to destroy it.
The Legacy of Ignorantism
T. H. (Trinidad Hermenegildo) Pardo de Tavera
A scathing critique of religious colonial rule exposes how centuries of enforced superstition crippled a nation's intellectual growth, framing modern secular education as the essential path toward genuine social progress.
The Lost Parchment: A Detective Story
Fergus Hume
A quiet English village becomes a tangled web of greed and suspicion when a hidden parchment threatens a wealthy young squire’s fortune, leading directly to a midnight murder.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 290, December 29, 1827
Various
An eclectic slice of Regency print culture, this gazetteer of antiquities, seasonal folklore, and technological innovation captures a nation poised between ancient superstition and industrial power.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 532, February 4, 1832
Various
An eclectic weekly miscellany from early nineteenth-century London offers readers a vibrant, fast-moving cross-section of popular culture, theatrical gossip, historical lore, literary commentary, and practical scientific curiosity.
The Morning Glory Club
George A. (George Alexander) Kyle
A small New England village turns into a battleground of manners, gossip, and local pride when a group of women decide to organize a club of their own.
The mother
Grazia Deledda
A young priest and his mother arrive in a remote, windswept Sardinian village, where a secret passion threatens his vows and destroys their fragile world.
The Pilgrim of Castile
Lope de Vega
A sea wreck on the Catalan coast casts up a lover disguised as a pilgrim, sparking a dizzying chain of mistaken identities, sea-bound catastrophes, and madness.
The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811)
D. D. (David Dickinson) Mann
A former colonial official presents an uncompromising, detailed accounting of early Australian settlement, charting its turbulent transition from a precarious penal outpost into a commercial trade hub.
The professor's experiment: A novel, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Duchess
A dying girl saved by a professor’s scientific breakthrough finds herself at the center of romantic misunderstandings, local gossip, and social friction in rural Ireland.
The raising and care of guinea pigs
Allen Christian Smith
A simple, practical guide to raising cavies reveals how these quiet, vegetarian creatures can easily transform a modest backyard, barn, or attic into a low-cost enterprise for scientific supply, household pets, or meat.
The Seven-Branched Candlestick: The Schooldays of Young American Jew
Gilbert W. (Gilbert Wolf) Gabriel
Courage replaces conformity as a young American Jew navigates prejudice, loss, and the slow discovery of his own heritage across seven pivotal years of education.