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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 79 of 711.
The Queen of Spades, and other stories
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
Gambling obsessions, secret marriages in blinding snowstorms, duels delayed for years, and tragic betrayals in the wilderness converge in this sweeping collection of classic Russian fiction.
The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
J. M. (John Medows) Rodwell
A prophet receives warnings, laws, and ancient histories through divine recitation, calling a divided society to abandon idols and embrace a single sovereign deity.
Ride 'em and weep
Raoul Whitfield
When a boastful California aviator joins a Texas air circus, professional rivalry and romantic jealousy trigger a high-stakes aerial feud. A sudden midair catastrophe forces two bitter rivals to choose between survival and mutual destruction.
The Homeric Hymns: A New Prose Translation
Andrew Lang
Sacred song meets early human curiosity when Greek epic traditions frame the divine, leaving mortal worshippers to map their terrifying world.
The Iliads of Homer: Translated according to the Greek
Homer
Pride and grief collide outside the walls of Troy as divine fury, human heartbreak, and relentless violence reshape the destinies of kings and mortal warriors alike.
Handwork in Wood
William Noyes
From the dangerous rush of a river log jam to the refined application of a chemical stain on oak, the transformation of timber into craft requires both physical mastery and systematic discipline.
Japanese Girls and Women: Revised and Enlarged Edition
Alice Mabel Bacon
Across the full spectrum of Japanese society, from secluded castle yards to bustling city streets, women navigate a complex balance between submissive duty and quiet, resilient power.
The Evolution of Naval Armament
Frederick Leslie Robertson
When the sail gave way to steam and timber yielded to iron, the warship underwent a transformation so radical that it severed the modern navy from centuries of maritime tradition.
The sexual life of woman in its physiological, pathological and hygienic aspects
E. Heinrich (Enoch Heinrich) Kisch
An exhaustive early-twentieth-century study maps the entirety of female biology through three distinct life phases, blending clinical observations, historical medical theories, and social commentary.
Aesop's Fables: A New Revised Version From Original Sources
Aesop
A sharp claw and a cunning trick often settle the day when beasts meet to bargain or battle in the dust. Every short tale lays bare the timeless follies, greeds, and quiet triumphs of living creatures.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)
Jean Calvin
God's grandeur shines through the universe, yet human minds—shattered by corrupt self-will—cannot apprehend saving truth without divine illumination, a Redeemer, and the regenerating work of the Spirit.
The La Chance Mine Mystery
Susan Morrow Jones
A missing horse, a shadowed wilderness, and a girl who is not who she claims to be.
Vikram and the Vampire: Classic Hindu Tales of Adventure, Magic, and Romance
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A king shoulders a demon to fulfill a promise, only to find himself trapped in a game of wit where every correct answer sets his captive free.
1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors
Mark Twain
Behind the polished facade of Elizabethan courtly elegance lies an uninhibited fireside chat where royalty, poets, and knights exchange outrageous vulgarities with scholarly flair.
The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Polybius
A world power expands across the Mediterranean, absorbing ancient kingdoms and city-states into its orbit, while a brilliant Greek political prisoner attempts to explain to his defeated countrymen exactly how their independence slipped away.
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Walter Woodburn Hyde
An ancient athletic festival produced a vast forest of bronze and marble, yet almost all of it vanished into lime kilns and melting pots. Walter Woodburn Hyde sets out to rebuild these lost masterpieces using only broken stone bases, classical literature, and secondhand Roman copies.
The World's Greatest Books
Unknown
A sweeping collection of classical summaries gathers centuries of Western thought, philosophy, and history into condensed, accessible portraits designed to educate and enlighten.
A Study of Fairy Tales
Laura Fry Kready
A central figure of early twentieth-century pedagogy offers a rigorous, clear-eyed framework for bringing classic folklore into early childhood education.
Greener Than You Think
Ward Moore
When an ambitious salesman applies a botanical growth formula to a neighborhood lawn, he unleashes an unstoppable, voracious grass that gradually consumes cities, continents, and human civilization itself.
Some Naval Yarns
Mordaunt Hall
Beneath the grey fog of the North Sea, an invisible army of sailors, pilots, and coast watchers risks everything to protect a nation at war. Their quiet courage unfolds in frozen cockpits, submerged steel hulls, and wave-battered lighthouses.
Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 7: The Finished Mystery
C. T. (Charles Taze) Russell
A sweeping verse-by-verse apocalyptic commentary unveils the grand timeline of human history, predicting the imminent collapse of earthly institutions and the dawn of a divine thousand-year reign.
Wild medicinal plants of the United States
Alice Henkel
This meticulously arranged federal survey bridges botanical taxonomy, regional geography, and early twentieth-century pharmacy to catalog North America’s wild medicinal flora.
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
A journey up an untamed African river becomes a perilous descent into the abyss of human greed, hypocrisy, and moral disintegration.
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern
Unknown
To journey through human expression is to realize that across centuries and continents, our fundamental longings, absurdities, and wonders remain profoundly, stubbornly unchanged.
Nonsense Books
Edward Lear
Absurdity becomes a refuge in a universe where tables walk, lovers sail in strainers, and eccentricity is met with sheer delightful indifference.
The Art of Perfumery, and Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants: With Instructions for the Manufacture of Perfumes for the Handkerchief, Scented Powders, Odorous Vinegars, Dentifrices, Pomatums, Cosmetics, Perfumed Soap, Etc., to which is Added an Appendix on Preparing Artificial Fruit-Essences, Etc
G. W. Septimus (George William Septimus) Piesse
Step into the world of Victorian chemistry, where the cultivation of flowers transforms into an exact science and an art form. G. W. Septimus Piesse provides a comprehensive manual detailing how to capture, preserve, and synthesize the subtle scents of the botanical world.
The forged coupon, and other stories
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A small lie passed along for profit sparks a quiet chain of moral ruin and surprising redemption across Russia.
The Seven Lamps of Architecture
John Ruskin
Buildings endure not merely through mortar and stone, but through the moral vitality of their creators. True architecture demands absolute devotion, rigorous honesty, and an uncompromising submission to the enduring laws of nature and human spirit.
The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme): The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: With Additional Writings and Sayings of St. Thérèse
Thérèse, de Lisieux, Saint
A young French woman enters a cloistered convent at fifteen and transforms the daily friction of monastic life into a profound spiritual path before her death at twenty-four.
The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Vol. 1
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
A temperamental young aristocrat exchanges raw vulnerability, ferocious ambition, and scathing wit through private correspondence, mapping his meteoric rise from rebellious schoolboy to infamous global poet.
Aristotle on the art of poetry
Aristotle
Human beings possess an innate instinct to imitate life and experience profound delight when discovering meaning through artistic representation, even when viewing painful subjects.
Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II: With an Account of Salem Village and a History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects
Charles Wentworth Upham
When neighbor turns against neighbor under the weight of imagined spectral terrors, the breakdown of community reveals how thin the veneer of early American civilization truly was.
The Common Spiders of the United States
J. H. (James Henry) Emerton
A accessible field guidedemystifies the unseen world of everyday arachnids, turning common fear into quiet fascination.
The poetical works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
A dark, glittering descent into human grief, loss, and the haunting edge of memory awaits within these verses.
The provincial letters of Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
A mock-polite letter to a friend becomes a lethal, razor-sharp interrogation of religious hypocrisy and abuse of power.
Typee: A Romance of the South Seas
Herman Melville
A young American sailor deserts his brutal whaling ship to seek freedom in an idyllic South Pacific valley, only to discover that his gracious, welcoming hosts belong to a feared cannibal tribe.
An Illustrated Dictionary of Words used in Art and Archaeology: Explaining terms frequently used in works on architecture, arms, bronzes, Christian art, colour, costume, decoration, devices, emblems, heraldry, lace, personal ornaments, pottery, painting, sculpture, &c., with their derivations
John W. (John William) Mollett
A sprawling compendium bridges antiquity, classical legend, and medieval craftsmanship into an accessible guide for art lovers, antiquarians, and readers seeking the physical reality of human culture.
Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
Thomas Carlyle
A blistering assault on nineteen-century materialism gives way to a fiery defense of the individual souls who shape human history.
The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Thomas Keightley
To cross the threshold into ancient folklore is to discover that humanity's fears, hopes, and visions of the unseen world are remarkably universal. This sprawling treasury gathers the spectral inhabitants, magical traditions, and haunting legends of the world under one comprehensive roof.
The Financier: A Novel
Theodore Dreiser
Ambition meets cold calculation in a city where morality is just another asset on the balance sheet. Frank Cowperwood learns early that in the market of life, power belongs to those who trade without illusion.
The Noble and Gentle Men of England
Evelyn Philip Shirley
A meticulous catalog of landed lineage records the enduring dynasties of the English gentry, mapping the survival of ancient bloodlines anchored firmly to the soil from the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century.
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Lynn Thorndike
Long before modern laboratory science emerged, medieval thinkers intertwined rigorous rational inquiry with the pursuit of occult forces, astrological influence, and magical marvels to explain the natural world.
The Deipnosophists
of Naucratis Athenaeus
Gathered at an opulent Roman banquet, learned men trade encyclopedic lore on food, poetry, custom, and comedy, preserving lost classical antiquity through relentless conversation over wine and dinner.
Kitty Maynard
Lucy Ellen Guernsey
A headstrong thirteen-year-old city girl is sent to her aunt’s country farm for the summer, where her deep-seated pride, vanity, and urge to outshine her peers lead her down a quiet path of deceit.
Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon
Robert Hooke
An extraordinary expedition into the unseen structures of daily life reveals that even the smoothest human creations crumble under scrutiny, while the smallest natural forms display terrifying, exquisite perfection.
Passage to Gomorrah
Robert F. Young
Trapped aboard a small transport vessel bound for a remote penal colony, a cynical pilot and a disgraced high-class courtesan face an unusual phenomenon in deep space that forces them to relive their pasts and confront their shared destiny.
The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy
Jacob Burckhardt
Modern individuality was not born by accident; it was forged within the volatile, dangerous Italian city-states where politics became an art form and personal talent superseded traditional inheritance.
The School for Scandal
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
A biting, brilliant eighteenth-century comedy of manners, this play exposes the hypocrisy of London high society through a relentless storm of gossip, disguised identity, and domestic strife.