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American Literature — page 42
3,609 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 42 of 76.
The Uphill Climb
B. M. Bower
A hungover cowboy wakes from a blackout to discover he married an unknown woman during a drunken brawl, forcing him onto a hard road of sobriety and self-discovery to prove his worth.
The Young Musician
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A penniless orphan, a trusty violin, and an arrogant town official set the stage for an ambitious boy’s journey toward independence.
Tiverton Tales
Alice Brown
Across twelve connected stories, a quiet New England village reveals how domestic routines, small rebellions, and buried memories illuminate the hidden dignity of human lives.
Torchy
Sewell Ford
A sharp-tongued, red-headed New York boy hustles his way through the corporate ladder, dropping quick-witted barbs while solving the absurd personal dilemmas of rich executives.
Traffic in Souls: A Novel of Crime and Its Cure
Eustace Hale Ball
A innocent girl lured into a nightmare, a hypocritical reformer pulling the strings, and an honest rookie cop fighting to save her—this 1914 crime drama exposes the shadowed gears of New York’s underworld.
Treat 'em Rough: Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer
Ring Lardner
A baseball pitcher’s endless bravado collides with the chaotic, unglamorous realities of first-world-war army camps.
Behind the Green Door
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
A young reporter’s ski trip turns into a dangerous investigation when she discovers a smuggling ring operating behind the doors of a luxury mountain hotel.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October 1852
Various
This nineteenth-century periodical offers a fascinating, varied window into the Victorian imagination, blending scientific inquiry, moralizing fiction, and romantic poetry within the pages of a popular monthly magazine.
Love After Marriage
Caroline Lee Hentz
The pursuit of deep, lasting affection often requires individuals to look beyond their own pride, vanity, and superficial judgments. These stories reveal the complex, often painful transformation of the heart after the initial illusions of romance have faded.
Molly Make-Believe
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
A sickbed becomes a theater of unexpected romance when a lonely invalid subscribes to a whimsical letter-writing service and falls for the imagination behind the ink.
More Portmanteau Plays
Stuart Walker
These three plays capture the essence of a visionary theatrical experiment, blending Japanese folklore, modern social comedy, and the poignant struggles of youth to define the spirit of early twentieth-century American drama.
The Barrel Mystery
William J. (William James) Flynn
A chilling, firsthand account of early twentieth-century organized crime, this narrative follows the relentless efforts of federal agents to dismantle a murderous counterfeiting syndicate operating within New York’s Italian immigrant communities.
The Wire Tappers
Arthur Stringer
A former convict and a quick-witted woman forge an unlikely partnership in the high-stakes world of urban espionage, where secrets are stolen through the wires of a changing city. This gripping tale of crime and redemption follows two outsiders who attempt to outmaneuver their pasts while navigating the treacherous…
An Artist in Crime
Rodrigues Ottolengui
A gentleman detective finds himself ensnared in a web of shifting identities and high-stakes gamesmanship, where the truth is never as simple as the evidence suggests.
Gentle Julia
Booth Tarkington
This is a sympathetic, sharp-eyed study of a small-town social orbit, capturing the absurdities of romantic obsession and the meddling mischief of a precocious teenager. It is a work of ironic observation that finds humor in the high drama of the young and the weary resignation of their elders.
Horace Chase
Constance Fenimore Woolson
A wealthy, powerful businessman marries a young, impulsive Southern woman in post-Civil War America, setting the stage for a quiet, psychological collision between his pragmatic world and her restless, unanchored spirit.
Jimmy Kirkland and the Plot for a Pennant
Hugh S. (Hugh Stuart) Fullerton
This story captures the breathless, high-stakes drama of professional baseball at the turn of the century, where the love of the game meets the grittiness of urban corruption.
The Funny Philosophers, or Wags and Sweethearts. A Novel
George Yellott
A group of eccentric, pseudo-intellectual young men embarks on a rambling, high-spirited quest for fortune and romance, only to find that life—and their own absurd ambitions—rarely conform to their theories.
Van Bibber and Others
Richard Harding Davis
The world of the late nineteenth-century gentleman is a stage, and those who inhabit it are often merely players performing for an audience of their peers.
With The Eyes Shut: 1898
Edward Bellamy
A weary traveler falls asleep on a train, only to wake in a future where the printed word has been entirely supplanted by the phonograph. This dream-like satire explores a society that has traded literacy for convenience.
A House Party with the Tucker Twins
Nell Speed
The Tucker Twins and their spirited circle of friends escape to an old country estate for an unforgettable fortnight of laughter, mischief, and gentle romance. This story captures a vanishing world of youthful high jinks and the enduring bonds of friendship.
Capitola's Peril: A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand'
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
This sequel follows the irrepressible Capitola Black as she navigates a web of villainous plots, secret identities, and frontier dangers. It is a high-spirited exploration of courage, redemption, and the ultimate triumph of truth over darkness.
Doctor Hathern's daughters
Mary Jane Holmes
HOOK Two sisters navigate the lingering shadows of the American Civil War and the volatility of the heart in a sprawling, character-driven story set against the backdrop of an old Virginia homestead.
Gifts of Genius: A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors
Unknown
This collection preserves the mid-nineteenth-century tradition of the "gift book"—an elegant, miscellaneous volume designed to offer readers a diverse sampling of the era's literary talent. It brings together prose and poetry from prominent American writers of the 1850s, serving as a time capsule of their aesthetic…
Homeburg Memories
George Fitch
A seasoned traveler shares the quiet, interconnected pulse of a small American town, revealing how every arrival, fire alarm, and school election binds its residents together in a web of shared, often humorous, history.
In Beaver Cove and Elsewhere
Matt (Martha Jane) Crim
In these vivid, earth-bound narratives, the rugged landscapes of Georgia become the silent, watchful witnesses to the intense passions, feuds, and long-buried secrets of its people.
Jerome, A Poor Man: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
A young man commits his life to an impossible vow of poverty, only to find that the forces of love and grace demand he finally accept help from those he once scorned.
Kilo
Ellis Parker Butler
The persistent book agent Eliph' Hewlitt arrives in the small town of Kilo armed with an encyclopedia and an unshakeable belief that every human problem—from courtship to cooking—can be solved by the right page. This lighthearted tale follows his gentle, persistent efforts to win the heart of local woman Sally…
Nature's Serial Story
Edward Payson Roe
An invitation to find stability, health, and romance in the rhythmic passage of the seasons. This is a story of how the land shapes the human heart.
Personality Plus: Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock
Edna Ferber
The narrative follows a successful businesswoman and her ambitious son as they navigate the evolving demands of the early twentieth-century advertising and garment industries. It captures the tension between professional tradition and the "modern" drive for rapid advancement.
Sanctuary
Edith Wharton
A mother’s quiet moral vigilance becomes the conscience of her son as he faces a devastating temptation that threatens his integrity.
Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods
Irving Bacheller
The wilderness is a doomed empire, and its quiet inhabitants are the last to witness the slow, inevitable encroachment of a world that values timber more than life.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 98, December, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of 1865, weaving together serialized fiction, political philosophy, and observations on the post-Civil War American condition.
The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop
Hamlin Garland
This Western drama follows a principled army officer defending an Indigenous tribe from predatory settlers. It is a story of moral courage, the clash of cultures, and the redemptive power of love amidst a harsh, high-mountain landscape.
The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado
Cyrus Townsend Brady
A woman of refinement and a rugged recluse find themselves bound by a perilous mountain winter, their survival testing both their physical endurance and the strength of their moral convictions.
The Desert and the Sown
Mary Hallock Foote
The desert and the sown are one in this somber meditation on the persistent, haunting nature of the past. A family’s long-buried secrets rise to the surface, testing the strength of love against the weight of inherited guilt.
The Early Bird: A Business Man's Love Story
George Randolph Chester
A restless young businessman seeks a quiet vacation, only to find that his instinct for seizing opportunity—and his sudden, all-consuming love—are impossible to switch off.
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844: Volume 23, Number 3
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany captures the restless intellectual spirit of its era, blending philosophical inquiry, travelogue, and social critique into a dense, multifaceted portrait of the Victorian imagination.
The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story
Burton Egbert Stevenson
HOOK When a wealthy recluse is found dead in his New York mansion—felled by a mysterious, venomous wound—a journalist and a lawyer must unravel a deadly puzzle hidden within a centuries-old French cabinet.
The Old Gray Homestead
Frances Parkinson Keyes
A young woman’s arrival at a decaying Vermont farm sparks a transformation, challenging the bitter pride of a struggling heir and ultimately forging a new life from the ashes of old traditions.
The One Hoss Shay: With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet &
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The curious fate of a century-old carriage and the secret engine behind the modern electric tram are revealed in this whimsical collection of rhythmic, witty verse.
The Re-Creation of Brian Kent
Harold Bell Wright
A broken man finds an unexpected harbor in the Ozark wilderness, where the quiet wisdom of an elderly schoolteacher forces him to confront his past and re-build his soul.
The She Boss: A Western Story
Arthur Preston Hankins
A giant of a man and a desert-hardened woman navigate a landscape of shifting sands and broken promises in this classic tale of the California frontier.
Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance
William Dean Howells
An emissary from an egalitarian utopia ventures into the competitive chaos of 1890s New York, ultimately returning home with an American bride who must reconcile her past with her new world.
Torchy, Private Sec
Sewell Ford
Armed with street-smart intuition and a lightning-fast wit, a young office boy navigates the cutthroat world of New York finance. He quickly proves that a sharp mind is the most valuable asset in any boardroom.
A Woman Named Smith
Marie Conway Oemler
A woman inherits a brooding, atmospheric estate in South Carolina and finds herself drawn into the orbit of an enigmatic, artistic neighbor who is bound by family secrets and the weight of the past.
Ben Blair: The Story of a Plainsman
Will Lillibridge
This is a story of two worlds colliding, where the raw, unvarnished integrity of the American plainsman meets the sophisticated, artificial life of the Eastern city. It is a quiet, intense study of what happens when a man of the earth demands, at any cost, the truth from those he loves.
Blue-Bird Weather
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
This story captures the stillness of the Virginia marshes and the sudden, disarming power of an unexpected romance. It explores how a chance encounter in the wilderness can reshape a man’s understanding of duty, forgiveness, and the future.