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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 713 of 714.

Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
A weekly miscellany from December 1853 opens a window onto Victorian intellectual curiosity, where scholars, antiquaries, and amateur enthusiasts gather to trade precise notes, unravel historical riddles, and debate obscure etymologies.

Oklahoma Sunshine
Freeman Edwin Miller
A warm, frontier-town optimism radiates through every entry of a regional columnist’s daily dispatch from the newly settled American West, where neighborly grit and unfailing good cheer turn dusty plains into a home.

One Third Off
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
Faced with a creeping midsection and failing stamina, a middle-aged writer trades denial for discipline, embarking on a self-devised diet to shed one third of his weight without losing his sense of humor.

Penny Nichols and the Knob Hill Mystery
Joan Clark
A young woman seeking a quiet summer rest stumbles into an old rural grudge, a hidden inheritance, and a series of mysterious nighttime prowlers.

Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, Volume 2, Part 4
Philip Henry Sheridan
Late in the summer of 1864, a Federal commander reorganizes his intelligence corps and takes charge of a swift, punishing campaign across Virginia. Through muddy roads, surprise attacks, and relentless pursuits, he works to break the Confederate hold on the Shenandoah Valley.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914
Various
A weekly issue of Edwardian satirical journalism captures the anxiety, absurdity, and artistic clashes of a nation unknowingly standing on the precipice of world war.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916
Various
A sharp, defiant crack of laughter rises from the damp trenches of Flanders and the stuffy committee rooms of wartime London. This collection captures a society keeping its chin up through pure, unadulterated satire.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, November 20, 1841
Various
A medical mishap, a royal birth, and a haircut on the bench intersect in this sharply satirical dispatch from mid-nineteenth-century London.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 2, 1891
Various
Satirical observations on political posturing and Victorian daily routine expose the subtle hypocrisies of late-nineteenth-century British life.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, February 7, 1917
Various
A nation at war buries its anxiety under a sharp, relentless wit, turning food shortages, icy streets, and military mishaps into a collective exercise in deadpan survival.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, November 14, 1917
Various
A satirical window into a nation at war, where humour becomes the ultimate weapon of endurance.

Rembrandt
Mortimer Menpes
A quiet encounter with an etching or a canvas can instantly dismantle decades of dry academic commentary, revealing the living, breathing human heart behind a legendary master's brushwork.

Running Water
A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
High above the chasm between human greed and moral grace, a daughter seeks her true father on treacherous Alpine ice.

Senate Resolution 6
United States. Congress. Senate
Introduced in the United States Senate in March 1869, Senate Resolution 6 outlines a rigorous, centralized system for purchasing government stationery and printing paper. It stands as a revealing, functional artifact of post-Civil War American legislative administration.

Seven Graded Sunday Schools: A Series of Practical Papers
Unknown
Late nineteenth-century Methodist educators faced a crisis of retention and order, discovering that traditional, single-room Sunday schools failed to keep maturing children engaged or systematically build Biblical literacy.

"Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier: With Some Personal Reminiscences
Warren Olney
Terrifying in its suddenness and unsparing in its clarity, this first-person account strips the romantic sheen from Civil War combat to reveal the bloody confusion of young men fighting for their lives.

Six Letters From the Colonies
R. C. (Robert Cooper) Seaton
A thoughtful observer travels across the sea to encounter young societies in the making, measuring their ambitious democratic experiments against the weight of British tradition.

Sketch of Handel and Beethoven: Two Lectures, Delivered in the Lecture Hall of the Wimbledon Village Club, on Monday Evening, Dec. 14, 1863
Thomas Hanly Ball
A deep, innate impulse drives humanity to express joy and sorrow through music, a universal language that transforms human emotion, bridges social divides, and elevates the soul.

Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive
Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester) Anderson
To reduce value to individual utility is to miss the invisible social ties that drive every transaction. In this foundational treatise, economic value emerges not from solitary calculations, but from the shared psychological and moral life of society.

Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Beneath the solemn quiet of dusk and the sudden lightning of grief, a devoted reader steps forward to construct a monument out of fourteen-line verses. Through praise, rage, and reverence, these poems turn the art of memory into an act of worship.

Stories and Sketches
Harriet S. (Harriet Sophia) Caswell
A quiet, steady gaze at nineteenth-century North American life, where faith and grit measure the distance between survival and despair.

Susan Proudleigh
Herbert George De Lisser
A proud, ambitious Kingston woman leaves behind neighborhood rivalries to build a lucrative life on the Panama Canal, only to navigate volatile lovers and sudden tragedy in a rapidly changing world.

Teddy and Carrots: Two Merchants of Newpaper Row
James Otis
A newly arrived orphan and a generous street urchin join forces to conquer the cutthroat world of newsboys and bootblacks in Victorian New York.

The A B C of Drag Hunting
Grace Clarke Newton
An abecedarian satire of early twentieth-century equestrian culture, this verse collection captures the mishaps, social rivalries, and financial perils that await anyone brave or foolish enough to join a drag hunt.

The Argentine as a Market
Nowell Lake Watson
Rapid agricultural expansion meets infrastructure bottlenecks, legislative paralysis, and trade vulnerabilities in early twentieth-century Argentina.

The Armourer's Prentices
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
An inheritance denied in the New Forest sends two orphaned brothers to Tudor London, where the clatter of the anvil meets the whisper of heresy.

The Boy Allies in the Trenches
Clair W. (Clair Wallace) Hayes
Two brave American teenagers throw themselves into the fires of the First World War, defying family, surviving treacherous espionage, and holding the line against the German advance.

The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps
James R. Driscoll
An American high school class at the onset of World War I leaves the classroom behind to become military aviators on the Western Front.

The business career in its public relations
Albert Shaw
Ethical commerce is not an oxymoron, but a creative public duty that demands positive civic action rather than passive adherence to negative rules.

The Castaway: Odd Craft, Part 2
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A returned mariner’s tall tale of shipwreck runs aground on his suspicious mother-in-law, who uses a local fortune-teller to expose his presumed secrets with hilarious coastal consequences.

The Cave by the Beech Fork: A Story of Kentucky—1815
Henry S. (Henry Stanislaus) Spalding
Deep in the frontier woods of early nineteenth-century Kentucky, two young hunters stumble into a hidden cavern, entangling themselves in a shadowy network of wilderness outlaws, wartime news, and local rifle trials.

The Character of the British Empire
Ramsay Muir
A global network bound not by military coercion, but by shared ideals of freedom and self-governance, faces its ultimate trial during a devastating world war.

The Coinages of the Channel Islands
B. Lowsley
A meticulous numismatic record recovers centuries of local commerce, revealing how small, isolated island communities navigated shifting international trade, foreign invasions, and constant monetary shortages.

The Disowned
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A young man cast off by his tyrannical father must navigate the glittering vanity and social squalls of Georgian England to forge his own fortune, honor, and destiny.

The Ethical Way
Joseph Farrell
A human couple captured by "ethical" alien slavers turns the tables without firing a single shot, using nothing more than basic human biology and a working knowledge of compound interest.

The Gold Trail
Harold Bindloss
In the rugged wilderness of western Canada, an exiled Englishman and a fierce contractor’s daughter fight through treacherous ranges, mud, and desperation to claim a future carved from solid rock.

The Grasshopper Stories
Elizabeth Davis Leavitt
Through conversations with an unusually perceptive grasshopper, a small boy learns to confront his everyday mistakes with honesty and treat the living world around him with gentle kindness.

The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: Intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws"
T. R. (Thomas Robert) Malthus
When a nation weighs whether to grow its own food or buy from abroad, simple theories collide with harsh real-world politics.

The Image and the Likeness
John Scott Campbell
Out of the devastation of Hiroshima emerges a gentle, four-hundred-foot giant, raised by cunning ideologues to conquer the world—only to defy his creators and seek true peace for mankind.

The King of Pirates: Being an Account of the Famous Enterprises of Captain Avery, the Mock King of Madagascar
Daniel Defoe
Stripping away legend to expose reality, these fake letters from a real pirate trade bombastic myth for a coolly calculating narrative of seafaring crime, fortune, and quiet retirement.

The Last of the Huggermuggers
Christopher Pearse Cranch
A young sailor boy is washed ashore on a strange island where gentle giants live, but his attempt to bring one home ends in unexpected tragedy.

The Loom of Life
Cotton Noe
Where memory and mountain air interweave, a poet spins the rustic life into an enduring tapestry.

The mermaid's prophecy, and other songs relating to Queen Dagmar
George Borrow
A royal bride sets sail across stormy seas to meet her unknown groom, unaware that her arrival will alter the fate of an entire kingdom.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 266, July 28, 1827
Various
A bustling cityscape of early nineteenth-century print culture opens up through brief histories, travel sketches, theatrical anecdotes, and scientific notes.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 560, August 4, 1832
Various
An 1832 issue of an English weekly periodical misleads no one with promises of grand narrative, offering instead a charming, eclectic mosaic of early Victorian culture, science, and storytelling.

The Missing Link
Edward Dyson
A rogue’s luck runs on nerve, but when a fake ape, a real murder, and five thousand pounds of paste diamonds collide, even nerve has its limits.

The Moccasin Ranch: A Story of Dakota
Hamlin Garland
A prairie claim in the Dakota Territory promises a fresh start, but isolation, brutal weather, and forbidden love soon threaten to tear three pioneers apart.

The Motor Girls Through New England
Margaret Penrose
A group of spirited young people, motoring through New England, face down road troubles, shadowy prowlers, and a high-stakes kidnapping before steering their tour toward a triumphant conclusion.