Book summaries
The key ideas of 246 timeless books, distilled into ~15 minute reads. Free, with no account.
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
7 min · Big ideas
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Mark Twain
7 min · Big ideas
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen
7 min · Big ideas
A farewell to arms
Ernest Hemingway
10 min · Big ideas
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
7 min · Big ideas
A Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett
8 min · Big ideas
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
9 min · Big ideas
A Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick
Jonathan Swift
9 min · Big ideas
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
9 min · Big ideas
A Princess of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
8 min · Big ideas
A Room with a View
E. M. Forster
8 min · Big ideas
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
7 min · Big ideas
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
8 min · Big ideas
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
7 min · Big ideas
Aesop's Fables
Aesop
8 min · Big ideas
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
8 min · Big ideas
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume
8 min · Big ideas
Andersen's Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Andersen
8 min · Big ideas
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
7 min · Big ideas
Anne of Green Gables
L. M. Montgomery
9 min · Big ideas
Anthem
Ayn Rand
8 min · Big ideas
Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne
8 min · Big ideas
Beowulf
Anonymous
8 min · Big ideas
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 min · Big ideas
Black Beauty
Anna Sewell
7 min · Big ideas
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
7 min · Big ideas
Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
Holman Day
9 min · Big ideas
Candide
Voltaire
7 min · Big ideas
Captains Courageous
Rudyard Kipling
8 min · Big ideas
Carmen
Prosper Mérimée
10 min · Big ideas
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
7 min · Big ideas
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell
8 min · Big ideas
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
9 min · Big ideas
Cynthia's Chauffeur
Louis Tracy
9 min · Big ideas
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
8 min · Big ideas
Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
Alex. McVeigh, Mrs. Miller
9 min · Big ideas
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
7 min · Big ideas
De Profundis
Oscar Wilde
10 min · Big ideas
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol
9 min · Big ideas
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
7 min · Big ideas
Discourse on the Method
René Descartes
8 min · Big ideas
Discourses of Epictetus
Epictetus
7 min · Big ideas
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes
8 min · Big ideas
Dracula
Bram Stoker
8 min · Big ideas
Dream Psychology
Sigmund Freud
7 min · Big ideas
Dubliners
James Joyce
8 min · Big ideas
Emily Brontë
A. Mary F. Robinson
10 min · Big ideas
Emma
Jane Austen
7 min · Big ideas
Essays
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 min · Big ideas
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
8 min · Big ideas
Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
8 min · Big ideas
Father Goriot
Honoré de Balzac
8 min · Big ideas
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev
8 min · Big ideas
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
7 min · Big ideas
Flatland
Edwin A. Abbott
8 min · Big ideas
Four Arthurian Romances
de Troyes, active 12th century Chrétien
11 min · Big ideas
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
7 min · Big ideas
From the Earth to the Moon
Jules Verne
9 min · Big ideas
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
8 min · Big ideas
Grimms' Fairy Tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
7 min · Big ideas
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift
8 min · Big ideas
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
8 min · Big ideas
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
8 min · Big ideas
Heidi
Johanna Spyri
8 min · Big ideas
Henrietta Temple: A Love Story
Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
10 min · Big ideas
Howards End
E. M. Forster
7 min · Big ideas
I am a woman
Ann Bannon
9 min · Big ideas
India's Love Lyrics
Laurence Hope
9 min · Big ideas
Ivanhoe
Walter Scott
7 min · Big ideas
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
7 min · Big ideas
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
8 min · Big ideas
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
8 min · Big ideas
King Lear
William Shakespeare
8 min · Big ideas
King Solomon's Mines
H. Rider Haggard
8 min · Big ideas
Le Morte d'Arthur
Thomas Malory
8 min · Big ideas
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
8 min · Big ideas
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
8 min · Big ideas
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
8 min · Big ideas
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
10 min · Big ideas
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
7 min · Big ideas
Looking Backward
Edward Bellamy
8 min · Big ideas
Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
R. D. Blackmore
10 min · Big ideas
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
8 min · Big ideas
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
7 min · Big ideas
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis
7 min · Big ideas
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
8 min · Big ideas
Master and Man
Leo Tolstoy
7 min · Big ideas
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
7 min · Big ideas
Middlemarch
George Eliot
7 min · Big ideas
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
7 min · Big ideas
Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe
8 min · Big ideas
Moods
Louisa May Alcott
9 min · Big ideas
Moral Letters to Lucilius
Seneca
8 min · Big ideas
My Ántonia
Willa Cather
7 min · Big ideas
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
8 min · Big ideas
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
8 min · Big ideas
Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
8 min · Big ideas
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky
7 min · Big ideas
O Pioneers!
Willa Cather
8 min · Big ideas
Oedipus King of Thebes: Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes
Sophocles
10 min · Big ideas
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
8 min · Big ideas
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
7 min · Big ideas
On the Genealogy of Morals
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 min · Big ideas
On the Happy Life
Seneca
7 min · Big ideas
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
7 min · Big ideas
On the Shortness of Life
Seneca
7 min · Big ideas
Othello
William Shakespeare
7 min · Big ideas
Paradise Lost
John Milton
8 min · Big ideas
Persuasion
Jane Austen
7 min · Big ideas
Peter Pan
J. M. Barrie
9 min · Big ideas
Pollyanna
Eleanor H. Porter
8 min · Big ideas
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
9 min · Big ideas
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
9 min · Big ideas
Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw
8 min · Big ideas
Resurrection
Leo Tolstoy
7 min · Big ideas
Robert Orange: Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange
John Oliver Hobbes
9 min · Big ideas
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
7 min · Big ideas
Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
8 min · Big ideas
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
7 min · Big ideas
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
9 min · Big ideas
Silas Marner
George Eliot
8 min · Big ideas
Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser
8 min · Big ideas
Sons and Lovers
D. H. Lawrence
8 min · Big ideas
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
7 min · Big ideas
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
7 min · Big ideas
Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs
7 min · Big ideas
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
8 min · Big ideas
That Girl Montana
Marah Ellis Ryan
9 min · Big ideas
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete
T. Smollett
10 min · Big ideas
The Adventures of Pinocchio
Carlo Collodi
7 min · Big ideas
The Adventures of Roderick Random
T. Smollett
9 min · Big ideas
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
6 min · Big ideas
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
8 min · Big ideas
The Aeneid
Virgil
9 min · Big ideas
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
8 min · Big ideas
The Analects of Confucius
Confucius
7 min · Big ideas
The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Andrew Lang
8 min · Big ideas
The Art of War
Sun Tzu
7 min · Big ideas
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
7 min · Big ideas
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
8 min · Big ideas
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
8 min · Big ideas
The Bhagavad Gita
Vyasa
7 min · Big ideas
The Blue Castle: a novel
L. M. Montgomery
10 min · Big ideas
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
7 min · Big ideas
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
8 min · Big ideas
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
7 min · Big ideas
The Cherry Orchard and Other Plays
Anton Chekhov
8 min · Big ideas
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
7 min · Big ideas
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
7 min · Big ideas
The Confessions of St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
7 min · Big ideas
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
8 min · Big ideas
The Crack of Doom
Robert Cromie
10 min · Big ideas
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri
8 min · Big ideas
The Enchanted April
Elizabeth Von Arnim
9 min · Big ideas
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
T. Smollett
10 min · Big ideas
The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar
Maurice Leblanc
11 min · Big ideas
The Gay Adventure: A Romance
Richard Bird
9 min · Big ideas
The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus
Cornelius Tacitus
9 min · Big ideas
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
8 min · Big ideas
The Green Mummy
Fergus Hume
9 min · Big ideas
The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
Lucas Malet
9 min · Big ideas
The History of Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
7 min · Big ideas
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle
9 min · Big ideas
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton
8 min · Big ideas
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo
8 min · Big ideas
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky
8 min · Big ideas
The Iliad
Homer
8 min · Big ideas
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
7 min · Big ideas
The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
8 min · Big ideas
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By Himself
Olaudah Equiano
9 min · Big ideas
The Invisible Man
H.G. Wells
7 min · Big ideas
The Island of Doctor Moreau
H.G. Wells
9 min · Big ideas
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
9 min · Big ideas
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
8 min · Big ideas
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks
Vatsyayana
10 min · Big ideas
The King in Yellow
Robert W. Chambers
9 min · Big ideas
The Lady of the Lake
Walter Scott
9 min · Big ideas
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
8 min · Big ideas
The Lost World
Arthur Conan Doyle
7 min · Big ideas
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
8 min · Big ideas
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
9 min · Big ideas
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
8 min · Big ideas
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot
8 min · Big ideas
The Misplaced Battleship
Harry Harrison
9 min · Big ideas
The Moon and Sixpence
W. Somerset Maugham
8 min · Big ideas
The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
8 min · Big ideas
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Ward Radcliffe
9 min · Big ideas
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie
7 min · Big ideas
The Mysterious Island
Jules Verne
8 min · Big ideas
The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle
7 min · Big ideas
The Odyssey
Homer
7 min · Big ideas
The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux
9 min · Big ideas
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
9 min · Big ideas
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
8 min · Big ideas
The Possessed
Fyodor Dostoevsky
8 min · Big ideas
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
7 min · Big ideas
The Prince and the Pauper
Mark Twain
8 min · Big ideas
The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope
9 min · Big ideas
The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
10 min · Big ideas
The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
7 min · Big ideas
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
8 min · Big ideas
The Republic
Plato
8 min · Big ideas
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
9 min · Big ideas
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám
7 min · Big ideas
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
9 min · Big ideas
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Baroness Orczy
8 min · Big ideas
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London
9 min · Big ideas
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
9 min · Big ideas
The Secret of Chimneys
Agatha Christie
9 min · Big ideas
The Sign of the Four
Arthur Conan Doyle
8 min · Big ideas
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
7 min · Big ideas
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8 min · Big ideas
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
9 min · Big ideas
The Symposium
Plato
7 min · Big ideas
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter
8 min · Big ideas
The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Tales
Edgar Allan Poe
8 min · Big ideas
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan
7 min · Big ideas
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
8 min · Big ideas
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
9 min · Big ideas
The Trial
Franz Kafka
8 min · Big ideas
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
8 min · Big ideas
The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End
Henry James
9 min · Big ideas
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
7 min · Big ideas
The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells
9 min · Big ideas
The Warden
Anthony Trollope
7 min · Big ideas
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
9 min · Big ideas
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
8 min · Big ideas
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
8 min · Big ideas
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum
7 min · Big ideas
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7 min · Big ideas
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald
8 min · Big ideas
Three Men in a Boat
Jerome K. Jerome
8 min · Big ideas
Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
8 min · Big ideas
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
8 min · Big ideas
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
7 min · Big ideas
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
8 min · Big ideas
Twenty years after
Alexandre Dumas
9 min · Big ideas
Ulysses
James Joyce
9 min · Big ideas
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
8 min · Big ideas
Utopia
Thomas More
7 min · Big ideas
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
7 min · Big ideas
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
7 min · Big ideas
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
7 min · Big ideas
White Fang
Jack London
8 min · Big ideas
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson
8 min · Big ideas
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
7 min · Big ideas