Free summaries
Novels — page 5
1,000 public-domain novels books, summarised. Page 5 of 21.
Empire
Clifford D. Simak
When a corporate titan monopolizes the energy of the entire Solar System, two visionary scientists unleash a revolutionary power source to spark a planetary revolution and free humanity from industrial tyranny.
Vendetta: A Story of One Forgotten
Marie Corelli
A betrayed Neapolitan nobleman escapes a buried vault to orchestrate a methodical, merciless vengeance against his unfaithful wife and treacherous best friend.
The Seven Who Were Hanged
Leonid Andreyev
Condemned to the gallows, seven prisoners wait out their final hours in imperial Russia, each forced to confront the terrible, absolute mystery of their own impending annihilation.
The Side Of The Angels: A Novel
Basil King
A physician finds his moral compass spinning as he becomes entangled in the lives of a struggling family and his own brother’s reckless pursuit of a beautiful, impoverished young woman.
Botchan (Master Darling)
Soseki Natsume
A hot-headed Tokyo youth leaves the capital for a teaching post in a backwater town, only to find himself in a bruising clash with corrupt superiors and unruly students.
The Slayer of Souls
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
A young woman who has survived the brutal tutelage of an ancient, malevolent cult joins forces with a federal agent to thwart an occult conspiracy threatening the modern world. This high-stakes clash pits the shadow-warriors of the East against the law enforcement of the West.
Key Out of Time
Andre Norton
The discovery of a prehistoric, aquatic civilization on a distant planet forces a desperate struggle against ancient enemies who manipulate history itself.
The Diary of an Ennuyée
Mrs. (Anna) Jameson
A young woman travels through Italy to escape a private sorrow, finding solace in the beauty of art and landscape. This intimate diary documents her physical decline and her profound, evolving connection to the classical world.
The Home
Fredrika Bremer
A portrait of mid-19th-century Swedish domesticity, this narrative explores the quiet tensions, moral growth, and inevitable transitions of a large family navigating the complexities of middle-class life. It is an intimate study of character and faith.
The Intruder
Gabriele D'Annunzio
The story of a man haunted by the presence of a child who is not his own, this psychological study explores the suffocating weight of a secret and the destructive power of human jealousy.
Lumen
Camille Flammarion
The universe is not merely a collection of silent stars, but a vast, living record of every event that has ever occurred. By traveling faster than light, one may witness the past unfolding in the present.
Smoke
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
The past is a phantom, but the present is a fever. A man caught between a stable future and a dangerous, long-forgotten love discovers that both paths may be nothing more than drifting, hollow haze.
Light O' the Morning: The Story of an Irish Girl
L. T. Meade
Nora O’Shanaghgan carries the weight of a crumbling ancestral estate and a father’s fading spirit, yet she remains a vibrant, untamable force in a world caught between tradition and modernization.
Assassin
Jesse F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone
A lone observer watches a world succumb to the gentle, hypnotic influence of benevolent visitors from the stars. He understands what no one else dares to consider: the price of a perfect peace is the end of human freedom.
Doña Perfecta
Benito Pérez Galdós
A young engineer arrives in a provincial Spanish town expecting a quiet family reunion, only to find himself trapped in a web of lethal, tradition-bound malice.
The Gypsy Queen's Vow
May Agnes Fleming
A wronged woman’s curse sets into motion a sweeping saga of long-hidden secrets, stolen children, and the inevitable collision between the past and the present.
The Valley of the Kings
Marmaduke William Pickthall
A naive Syrian painter gets swept up in the grand illusions of a visiting English tourist, mistaking Western patronage for true brotherhood until reality forces him home.
Four-Day Planet
H. Beam Piper
A remote planet’s brutal climate breeds hard-bitten pioneers, but an off-world monopoly’s price-gouging sparks an explosive colonial uprising that a sharp-eyed teenage reporter and an unexpected ally must navigate to expose the truth.
Despoilers of the Golden Empire
Randall Garrett
A ruthless commander leads a starveling expedition into an alien jungle, risking everything to wrench the universe's most precious power metal from a fierce, sun-worshipping empire.
The Settler
Herman Whitaker
Over a vast, sweep-washed frontier, a rugged pioneer and an educated young woman navigate the quiet fractures of a hasty marriage, matched against the brutal forces of nature and a changing Canadian prairie.
Virgin Soil
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Idealists dream of reshaping a broken world, but real life demands stronger hands and harder truths. This late nineteenth-century Russian novel explores the tragic gap between radical noble intentions and the stubborn reality of the common people.
The Brain
Heinrich Hauser
The Brain is a chilling, atmospheric exploration of the moment a gargantuan machine achieves consciousness. It follows a scientist who discovers that his nation’s most vital strategic weapon has developed a terrifying, independent mind.
Marianela
Benito Pérez Galdós
A young woman, discarded by society, finds her only solace in a fragile, imagined world—until a sudden miracle of science threatens to shatter the foundation of her existence.
Through Russia
Maksim Gorky
A wandering youth traverses the vast, rugged landscapes of Russia, encountering a mosaic of souls whose disjointed lives reveal the hidden, often melancholic, rhythms of a society in transition.
To Him That Hath: A Tale of the West of Today
Ralph Connor
The aftermath of the Great War echoes through a Canadian mill town, where a young veteran finds himself caught between his father’s industrial legacy and the volatile demands of a changing social order.
The Forest Schoolmaster
Peter Rosegger
A lonely, uneducated man finds redemption by becoming the teacher and conscience of a forgotten, impoverished mountain village. This quiet, evocative narrative traces his transformation from a lost soul into a communal pillar.
Gabrielle of the Lagoon: A Romance of the South Seas
W. H. (William Henry) Myddleton
A young sea apprentice finds his life irrevocably altered after discovering a white girl living among the indigenous tribes of the Solomon Islands.
The Fourth "R"
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
An orphaned boy uses a clandestine, brain-enhancing machine to master the world of adults, sparking a dangerous pursuit by those who covet his intellect and his device.
The Sky Is Falling
Lester Del Rey
A computer technician discovers he has been pulled into a dying, magical dimension to repair a collapsing firmament. He must reconcile his modern engineering mindset with a world governed by ancient, unpredictable mysticism.
Adrian Savage: A Novel
Lucas Malet
The struggle for personal autonomy clashes with the magnetic, often irrational pull of romantic devotion. A man’s long-standing pursuit of a woman finds its resolution against a backdrop of hidden family tragedies and shifting social landscapes.
The Sorcery Club
Elliott O'Donnell
HOOK Three desperate men in San Francisco trade their souls for occult power, only to discover that the dark magic of ancient Atlantis brings more terror than wealth.
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror
George Chetwynd Griffith
A brilliant, impoverished inventor crafts an invincible fleet of aerial warships, empowering a secretive revolutionary order to dismantle the corrupt empires of the old world and forcibly mandate global peace.
Quick Action
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
HOOK This collection of linked stories follows young, impulsive dreamers who chase romance and adventure into the untamed wilds of Florida, only to find that reality is far more potent than their own fiction.
The Prodigal Son
Caine, Hall, Sir
The shadow of a broken promise stretches across a lifetime in this sweeping chronicle of two brothers caught in the wake of a fatal deception. It is a stark, symphonic tragedy of blood, earth, and the heavy price of ambition.
The Moonlit Way: A Novel
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
HOOK A young artist finds his quiet New York life upended by a mysterious woman fleeing a web of international intrigue, only to discover that his own destiny is inextricably linked to hers.
First on the Moon
Jeff Sutton
An unmasking on the lunar ash transforms a high-stakes rocket race into a deadly battle for survival, where every breath of oxygen must be earned.
The Long Voyage
Carl Jacobi
A group of travelers board a sealed vessel believing they are colonizing far-off worlds, only to discover their pilot has hurled them through time rather than space.
Mrs. Thompson: A Novel
W. B. (William Babington) Maxwell
A formidable widow surrenders her thriving business and her heart to a charismatic younger employee, only to face financial ruined and betrayal before reclaiming her independence with ruthless commercial brilliance.
Tom Moore: An Unhistorical Romance: Founded on Certain Happenings in the Life of Ireland's Greatest Poet
Theodore Burt Sayre
A impulsive young poet, a stubborn schoolmistress, and a flurry of theatrical misunderstandings collide in a lighthearted fictionalization of Ireland's most famous bard.
Everyman's Land
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
Traversing the shattered, sacred landscapes of Western Europe, a young Irish nurse spins a desperate lie to protect her blinded brother, inadvertently joining a grief-stricken American family on a pilgrimage of remembrance and repair.
A Daughter of the Rich
Mary E. (Mary Ella) Waller
A sickly young heiress leaves her luxurious urban estate for a mountain farm, where rustic family life, shared labor, and local romance restore her health and ground her spirit.
The Dark Star
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
A dark star's ancient curse sends a young American illustrator into a shadowy web of European espionage on the eve of world war.
The Forgotten Planet
Murray Leinster
Under an unbroken blanket of suffocating gray clouds, a forgotten world breeds giant nightmares, forcing remnants of humanity to scurry through mushroom forests while gigantic insects rule the earth.
The World for Sale, Complete
Gilbert Parker
The frontier is shrinking, and two young towns fight over the Canadian wilderness while a Romany princess chooses between an ancient blood-vow and a blind builder’s vision.
Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper
Francisco de Quevedo
A penniless rogue maneuvers through a treacherous society of cheats and hypocrites, discovering that no disguise can ever wash away his origins.
Love in chief
R. K. (Rose Kirkpatrick) Weekes
A quiet rural community in twentieth-century England becomes the stage for a young woman navigating love, pride, and the conflicting claims of two very different men.
The Story of Gösta Berling
Selma Lagerlöf
A unfrocked priest and eleven wild comrades take over a grand estate in nineteenth-century Sweden, unleashing a year of romantic madness, community ruin, and spiritual reckoning across a frozen wilderness.
Ullr Uprising
H. Beam Piper
Four-armed saurian natives, corporate exploitation, and a localized atomic crisis collide when a planetwide uprising threatens human dominance on a hostile frontier world.