Free summaries
Historical Novels — page 3
387 public-domain historical novels books, summarised. Page 3 of 9.
Tara: A Mahratta Tale
Meadows Taylor
A young Brahmin widow becomes a devoted temple priestess in seventeen-century India, only to be swept into a perilous clash between a rising Maratha chieftain and the Bijapur Kingdom. <Image alt="Book cover of Tara: A Mahratta Tale" caption="Tara: A Mahratta Tale" src="imageagenttag12407152818080985314"/
Uncle Bernac: A Memory of the Empire
Arthur Conan Doyle
A young Royalist returns from exile to claim his ancestral estate, only to find himself entangled in a deadly conspiracy and swept into the intimate circle of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Rabbi and Priest: A Story
Milton Goldsmith
Two Jewish boys, torn from their family in imperial Russia, navigate divergent paths through persecution, state violence, and the enduring pull of faith.
Onesimus: Memoirs of a Disciple of St. Paul
Edwin Abbott Abbott
A slave’s journey from bondage to doubt, philosophical wandering, and ultimate spiritual liberation forms the emotional center of this first-century Roman world portrait.
The Laughing Cavalier: The Story of the Ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
In seventeenth-century Haarlem, a broke, lighthearted soldier of fortune accepts a murky assignment to abduct a wealthy merchant's daughter, only to find himself entangled in political treason, unexpected honor, and romantic devotion.
The Red, White, and Green
Herbert Hayens
The struggle for national identity is a crucible of blood and loyalty, where the cost of liberty is measured in the lives of brothers and the heavy silence of the defeated.
In the Fire of the Forge: A Romance of Old Nuremberg
Georg Ebers
In the shadow of a medieval German city, a young woman’s vow to God and a reckless knight’s search for meaning collide in a struggle between earthly love and the pull of the cloister.
The Playground of Satan
Beatrice C. Baskerville
The Polish landscape is not merely a setting, but a crucible where ancient blood feuds and modern industrial warfare collide, leaving the landed gentry to fight for their survival amid the ruins of their own history.
The Coming Conquest of England
August Niemann
The sun sets on the British Empire as a coalition of continental powers rises to challenge its global dominance, sparking a cataclysmic struggle for the future of the world.
Brian Fitz-Count: A Story of Wallingford Castle and Dorchester Abbey
A. D. (Augustine David) Crake
A fierce Norman baron and a mysterious peasant youth navigate the brutal landscape of 12th-century England, where ancient blood feuds and the shifting allegiances of a civil war collide with a father’s long-buried secret.
The Court Jester
Cornelia Baker
A loyal fool navigates the treacherous politics of fifteenth-century European courts to protect his young charge, eventually guiding her toward a fateful, romantic union.
The Five Arrows
Allan Chase
HOOK A journalist uncovers a clandestine web of fascist influence in a tense, wartime Latin American nation, where every shadow conceals a threat and every alliance is a calculated risk.
Sidonia, the Sorceress : the Supposed Destroyer of the Whole Reigning Ducal House of Pomerania
Wilhelm Meinhold
Sidonia von Bork, a noblewoman of striking beauty and relentless spite, descends into a life of dark obsession after the ducal house of Pomerania repeatedly spurns her. Her path from a court favorite to a condemned sorceress becomes a tragic spiral of revenge, magic, and the systematic undoing of a royal dynasty.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne: The End and Beginning of an Era
John Bursey
The final installment of the D’Artagnan Romances follows the aging, separated musketeers as they navigate the shifting political landscape of Louis XIV’s France. It is a sprawling, elegiac meditation on the twilight of chivalry and the inevitable erosion of idealism.
The Cock and Anchor
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A young woman finds herself ensnared in a web of deceit and forced marriage, relying on a long-lost love to navigate the shadows of a dangerous and atmospheric eighteenth-century Dublin.
Ridgeway: An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada
Scian Dubh
This historical romance blends the fervor of 19th-century Irish nationalism with the gritty reality of the 1866 Fenian Brotherhood raids into Canada. It is a partisan, spirited chronicle that transforms a minor military conflict into an epic struggle for national identity and personal devotion.
Isabella Orsini: A Historical Novel of the Fifteenth Century
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi
A tragic historical chronicle of the Medici family, this narrative reconstructs the dark fate of Isabella Orsini, a woman caught within the lethal machinations of sixteenth-century Italian nobility.
Akbar: An Eastern Romance
P. A. S. van (Petrus Abraham Samuel) Limburg Brouwer
This historical romance offers an immersive portrait of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, blending the intrigue of a sprawling imperial court with the philosophical struggles of a ruler seeking truth in a world of clashing faiths.
Adam Hepburn's Vow: A Tale of Kirk and Covenant
Annie S. Swan
A child rides a pony toward Edinburgh into a gathering dusk, unaware that the kingdom above her is about to tear itself apart over the right of free worship.
The Daughter of an Empress
L. (Luise) Mühlbach
A young orphan raised in a secluded Italian villa discovers she is the secret daughter of a dead Russian empress, only to be drawn into a deadly web of court politics, foreign intrigue, and betrayal.
Margery (Gred): A Tale Of Old Nuremberg
Georg Ebers
A childhood friendship in 15th-century Nuremberg matures into an ordeal of rivalry, captivity, and devotion, testing two maidens who must navigate the treacherous currents of high-born arrogance and foreign peril to save the men they love.
Quintus Claudius: A Romance of Imperial Rome. Volume 2
Ernst Eckstein
The Roman Empire trembles as a young aristocrat risks everything to protect the persecuted, caught between a tyrannical Emperor and the quiet, dangerous rise of a new faith.
Prince and Heretic
Marjorie Bowen
Two brothers, a fragile marriage, and the shadow of an empire converge as a young prince stakes everything to challenge the world's most terrifying tyranny.
No Defense, Volume 1
Gilbert Parker
Irish pride, political intrigue, and a murder charge collide in a sprawling tale of chivalry, honor, and sacrifice.
Lysbeth, a Tale of the Dutch
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
A young Dutch woman’s fateful encounter with a ruthless Spanish officer binds her family’s destiny to the bloody struggle for religious and political freedom in the sixteenth-century Netherlands.
The Curse of Koshiu: A Chronicle of Old Japan
Lewis Wingfield
A doomed family's blood-soaked tyranny crumbles under a executed farmer’s curse, tearing apart brotherly bonds, imperial court politics, and a land pushed to the brink of collapse.
A Secret Service: Being Strange Tales of a Nihilist
William Le Queux
A collection of breathless, interconnected vignettes, this work dramatizes the shadow war between Russian revolutionaries and the brutal Tsarist police. It serves as a vivid relic of fin-de-siècle anxieties regarding espionage and political upheaval.
Joyce Morrell's Harvest: The Annals of Selwick Hall
Emily Sarah Holt
A quiet, devout household in the English countryside faces the sudden, sharp trials of life and love, learning the profound, often painful lesson of waiting on the Lord’s timing.
Il Novellino: The hundred old tales
Edward Storer
In this collection of medieval Italian tales, ancient legends, courtly jests, and moral fables collide, revealing a world where wit is a form of currency and justice is often as unpredictable as a king’s whim. These brief, punchy narratives capture the heart of the 13th-century imagination, offering a vibrant…
Agnes of Sorrento
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Set against the backdrop of Renaissance Italy, this narrative follows a pious peasant girl whose faith and beauty draw her into the dangerous orbit of a noble cavalier and the shadow of religious upheaval.
Barlasch of the Guard
Henry Seton Merriman
An aging, cynical soldier of Napoleon’s Guard finds his destiny entangled with a quiet Dantzig family, as the disastrous Russian campaign transforms the lives of those left in its wake.
The wolf-cub
Patrick Casey
The mountain-born outlaw Jacinto Quesada navigates a treacherous landscape of plague, vengeance, and shifting loyalties in a Spain where the divide between the lawless and the righteous is as thin as a razor’s edge.
Chivalry: Dizain des Reines
James Branch Cabell
This collection of ten interconnected stories reimagines the medieval age through the prism of courtly love, where the pursuit of an ideal remains both a sublime calling and a source of devastating irony. It explores the persistence of romantic dreams against the harsh, indifferent landscape of human history.
Foes
Mary Johnston
This is a somber, meditative exploration of a lifelong rivalry, tracing how two men bound by history and affection eventually unravel the knots of vengeance that threaten to destroy them.
The Usurper: An Episode in Japanese History
Judith Gautier
In the shadow of a crumbling empire, a loyal prince and a desperate ruler weave a doomed resistance against a rising usurper. This tale of political intrigue and tragic devotion unfolds amidst the shifting landscapes of a Japan caught between ancient tradition and total war.
Barbarossa
Conrad von Bolanden
The struggle between an ambitious emperor and the papacy defines this historical epic, which contrasts the brutal exercise of temporal power against the spiritual endurance of the Church in twelfth-century Europe.
![Cover of Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/michel-and-angele-a-ladder-of-swords-gilbert-parker.webp)
Michel and Angele [A Ladder of Swords]
Gilbert Parker
A soldier and a Huguenot maiden find shelter in the shadow of Elizabeth’s court, where love is a precarious game played against the whims of a powerful, inscrutable Queen.
St. Martin's Summer
Rafael Sabatini
The late-blooming romance between a battle-hardened soldier and a spirited noblewoman defies the chill of an autumn landscape. In the shadow of a dark, ancestral fortress, duty yields to a passion as unexpected as a summer day in November.
The City of Delight: A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem
Elizabeth Miller
The end of an era looms over the ancient world as a city faces its final, desperate reckoning. Amidst the rising smoke of a doomed capital, a young woman’s search for her identity becomes inextricably tangled with the shifting allegiances of war.
When Valmond Came to Pontiac: The Story of a Lost Napoleon. Complete
Gilbert Parker
A mysterious stranger arrives in a quiet French-Canadian village, claiming a royal heritage that transforms the lives of the simple people around him.
Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century
J. P. (Jens Peter) Jacobsen
A woman of high birth defies the rigid expectations of her era to pursue a life of raw, unvarnished experience, charting a course that leads from the golden heights of the seventeenth-century Danish court to the dusty roads of a wandering itinerant.
Sarita, the Carlist
Arthur W. Marchmont
A man caught in the dangerous crossfire of Spanish politics must outwit a ruthless rival to protect the woman who has pledged her life to a lost cause.
The Weird of the Wentworths: A Tale of George IV's Time, Vol. 1
Johannes Scotus
This Victorian-era romance tracks the collision between fragile, idealized romantic dreams and the cold, often cynical realities of life among the British aristocracy during the reign of George IV. It is a portrait of obsession, social maneuvering, and the struggle to maintain moral rectitude in a world governed by…
Marie
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
A young officer’s honor is tested when he is caught between his oath to the Empress and a debt of gratitude to the charismatic, bloodthirsty rebel claiming her throne.
The Gold Brick
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A sweeping domestic melodrama of the mid-nineteenth century, this narrative follows the far-flung consequences of a criminal act and the long, arduous road to redemption for those left in its wake. It is a story of stolen wealth, shattered families, and the enduring power of faith, moving from the tropical shadow…
Pausanias, the Spartan
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A Spartan regent risks his reputation and his life by embracing the decadence of the East and the allure of an Athenian alliance. This unfinished historical drama captures the unraveling of a legendary hero.
Serapis
Georg Ebers
In a city divided by faith and teetering on the edge of collapse, two worlds collide as the ancient gods of Alexandria face their final, violent sunset.
A Word, Only a Word
Georg Ebers
The pursuit of a singular, transformative word guides a young man from the humble, sheltered woods of the Black Forest to the violent, shifting battlefields of the Eighty Years' War. It is a journey of self-discovery, testing whether life is defined by the rigid acquisition of power or the quiet depth of affection.