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American Literature — page 45
3,593 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 45 of 75.
Letters from a Landscape Painter
Charles Lanman
A wandering artist traverses the American wilderness, finding spiritual resonance in the majesty of nature and the quiet lives of its inhabitants. These reflections offer a meditative glimpse into a lost nineteenth-century landscape.
Messiah
Gore Vidal
A charisma that offers absolute certainty about death will always find a mass audience. This sharp, forgotten mid-century satire charts how easily a civilization's spiritual void transforms a simple message of quiet oblivion into an inescapable global death cult.
Passages from a Relinquished Work (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
An orphaned youth flees the suffocating expectations of a stern guardian to become a wandering storyteller, only to discover that fame is a hollow, accidental, and often humiliating pursuit.
Rocket Summer
Ray Bradbury
The world reaches for the stars, but humanity’s obsession with progress outpaces its capacity for wisdom. When the dream of space flight arrives, it brings a terrifying price that threatens to consume the earth itself.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This issue of a venerable American literary magazine captures the fractured, urgent spirit of the United States in the final weeks of the Civil War. It offers a window into the intellectual and cultural preoccupations of 1865.
The Candy Country
Louisa May Alcott
A headstrong girl is whisked away to a surreal land made entirely of sweets, only to discover that indulgence has its own bitter price. This playful, cautionary tale serves as a vibrant companion to the author’s more famous domestic narratives.
The fire in the flint
Walter White
A young Black doctor returns to his segregated hometown believing professional excellence and political neutrality will protect him, only to learn that white supremacy tolerates no independent success.
The Helpers
Francis Lynde
A young man loses his way in the high stakes of late-nineteenth-century Colorado, only to find that grace arrives through the unasked-for kindness of others.
The Man Who Could Not Lose
Richard Harding Davis
The man who can do no wrong finds his extraordinary luck tested by the high-stakes world of horse racing and the unpredictable whims of public fame.
The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 1
R. H. (Robert Henry) Newell
A satirical correspondent observes the absurdities of the American Civil War through the lens of a bumbling, self-important military unit known as the Mackerel Brigade.
Aces Up
Covington Clarke
War narrows a young man’s focus to the roar of a motor and the line of the horizon, until the ground drops away and survival becomes a matter of reflex, camaraderie, and sheer nerve.
Beyond the Horizon
Eugene O'Neill
Two brothers exchange their true callings for love and pride, trapping each other in lives meant for the other and watching their family farm collapse into bitter regret.
Family Pride
Mary Jane Holmes
When a gentle New England girl marries into a haughty urban family, the clashes of class, secrets, and pride threaten to shatter every heart involved.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, July 1849
Various
Nineteenth-century American life unfolds through a lively tapestry of military valor, romantic sacrifices, philosophical essays, and soulful poetry.
Hookers
Richard F. Mann
A woman arrives in a border town with a singular, mercenary ambition: to amass a fortune and escape the life as quickly as possible. Her journey through the nightlife of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez is defined by volatility, shifting loyalties, and the constant, dangerous pursuit of pleasure.
Jane Talbot
Charles Brockden Brown
A young woman's tender heart and moral certainty collide with family malice and rigid propriety in this early American novel of passionate devotion.
John Jones's Dollar
Harry Stephen Keeler
A single dollar deposited at compound interest in 1921 quietly expands across ten centuries, eventually threatening to bankrupt the entire solar system.
Love under Fire
Randall Parrish
A Union scout slips across a river into Confederate territory, only to find that his hardest battle will be fought over the heart of a brave Southern woman.
Missy: A Novel
Miriam Coles Harris
This narrative of quiet domesticity and emotional restraint follows a woman navigating the complications of neighbors, duty, and the unexpected stirrings of the heart. It captures the tension between rigid social codes and the sudden, disruptive arrival of personal desire.
Rebecca Mary
Annie Hamilton Donnell
A lonely girl, a stern aunt, and a white rooster learn that duty is no substitute for love.
Roughing it De Luxe
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
A middle-aged humorist takes a train across the American Southwest, discovering that modern comfort cannot completely tame the desert, the canyons, or the colorful locals.
The Flag-Raising
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A imaginative girl transforms a quiet Maine village through her vivid poetry, fierce loyalty, and spirited rescue of a lost community flag.
The horror in the burying-ground
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A secluded New England town harbours a dark secret of rival lovers, experimental fluids, and a terrifying double burial that haunts the surviving sister forever.
The Mystery of Murray Davenport: A Story of New York at the Present Day
Robert Neilson Stephens
A desperate man undergoes a radical physical transformation to escape his lifelong ill luck, only to find that identity and love cannot be so easily rewritten.
Tillie, a Mennonite Maid
Helen Reimensnyder Martin
A young Mennonite girl in rural Pennsylvania fights her father's harsh tyranny to pursue an education, a broader world, and the right to her own life.
We Three
Gouverneur Morris
An idle man of privilege becomes tangled in a marriage that is already falling apart, only to discover that love without discipline destroys everyone involved.
A Select Party
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A wealthy visionary builds a glittering palace out of evening clouds and invites the world's most elusive, legendary, and hypothetical figures to a grand banquet.
Anna Christie
Eugene O'Neill
A harsh past collides with an uncertain future when a weary young woman steps into a New York waterfront saloon to find the father she hasn't seen in fifteen years.
Condensed Novels
Bret Harte
Literary parody becomes a high art when a writer captures not merely the mannerisms of his contemporaries, but the exact points where their craft gives way to absurdity.
Daisy Herself
Will E. (William Ernest) Ingersoll
A spirited prairie girl flees a dull farm for the city, only to discover that navigating urban temptation, strange aristocrats, and her own reckless heart requires more than just stubborn independence.
Danger at the Drawbridge
Mildred A. (Mildred Augustine) Wirt
Penny Parker, an audacious teenaged reporter with a knack for trouble, refuses to let a barricaded drawbridge stop her from landing the story of a lifetime.
Footprints on the Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A day spent walking along an isolated New England coastline offers a meditative retreat into the quiet mysteries of nature, human memory, and the self.
From the Valley of the Missing
Grace Miller White
A stolen toddler grows up as a boyish squatter along the canal banks, until a stolen pig brings her face-to-face with the wealthy family that unknowingly holds the key to her past.
John Marvel, Assistant
Thomas Nelson Page
An arrogant young lawyer loses his fortune and position, only to find his life transformed among the urban poor by an idealist, a courageous minister, and the woman he loves.
Miss Minerva and William Green Hill
Frances Boyd Calhoun
A small-town boy arrives at his stern aunt's door, bringing southern plantation habits, colorful profanity, and an unquenchable instinct for mischief that upends her quiet world.
O. Henry memorial award prize stories of 1923
Unknown
Across the expanse of early twentieth-century America, ordinary men and women reach for connection, dignity, and escape from the quiet desperation of their daily lives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and seer
Amos Bronson Alcott
A quiet intimacy suffuses this homage, capturing the delicate line where deep personal affection touches philosophical reverence.
Six Girls and the Tea Room
Marion Ames Taggart
When a family’s financial survival depends on grit, affection, and enterprise, opening a shop on a fashionable Manhattan street turns a winter of uncertainty into an overwhelming flood of grace.
Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A reclusive observer sits hidden behind his window curtain on a summer Sunday, watching the quiet pulse of a New England town as it gathers, worships, and scatters around the parish church.
The Captain's Toll-Gate
Frank R. Stockton
A spirited young woman takes refuge at her uncle's tollhouse, where her refusal to be managed sets off a flurry of suitors and misunderstandings.
The Man of Letters as a Man of Business
William Dean Howells
Writing fiction or verse for money carries an inherent moral contradiction, turning a noble inner calling into a commercial transaction.
The Romance of a Plain Man
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
A boy from a Richmond tenement resolves to win wealth and the hand of a highborn woman, only to discover how easily money corrupts the love it was meant to secure.
The Rosie World
Parker Fillmore
A small girl in a working-class neighborhood fights her way through family squabbles, poor shoes, and street politics with sharp eyes and an indomitable spirit.
The Three Black Pennys: A Novel
Joseph Hergesheimer
In the thick woods of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, the first dark-featured rebel of the Penny family turns his back on his father's iron furnace, setting in motion a multi-generational legacy bound to the fiery rise of American industry.
The Village Convict: First published in the "Century Magazine"
Heman White Chaplin
A young man returns from prison to his coastal New England village, where quiet perseverance slowly rewrites his place among a wary community.
Weeds
Edith Summers Kelley
A poignant tale of rural life in Kentucky, where the struggles of farm families are as persistent as the weeds in their fields.
Five O'Clock Tea: Farce
William Dean Howells
A snowy afternoon, an over-full parlor, and a relentless suitor turn a simple tea party into a high-stakes duel of wits.
Humoresque: A Laugh on Life with a Tear Behind It
Fannie Hurst
A child's prodigy bow meets the roar of a Manhattan crowd, while around the corner a young woman stumbles into the sharp, blinding light of the city's underbelly.