AustLit

A gambler and highly honourable nobleman lays a bet for a race with a mysterious man who appears one night leaving him thousands of pounds to cover the bet. The nobleman loses but it is five years before he is called on to pay back the sum. The winner was a defaulting solicitor who had just served his gaol term at Portland. (PB)

Historical identities, humour. Mr Pitt and Lord Newcastle argue about sending the fleet to sea against the French from two beds. (PB)

In June, a chain gang's attempted escape from Port Arthur takes advantage of heavy fog. A gravel escapes; they force a signalman to give an all clear semaphore; one kills his enemy from Hobart days - the muster master. At Eagle Hawk Neck they swim across an ocean passage where one has his leg bitten off by a shark - and is killed at his own request to avoid recapture. They shelter in a hut where they kill and rob an officer and capture his men before escaping into the bush. Their bids on Tasmania's settlers continue for six months and involve more killings until they are captured and killed at Christmas 1837. (PB)

Mining tale. Two young gold-mining mates agree to take an idle but entertaining companion with them on their move to their next site across the desert. The loss of a camera and a photograph of a mirage of attempted murder convict their fellow traveller of robbery of their gold. His character is interesting in its combination of good humour, education and violence. (PB)

Account of the romance between Henry Cecil, Lord Exeter, and a beautiful young farmer's daughter whom he marries anonymously seeking her beauty and her goodness. Includes one of Moore's "Irish melodies" on the match, and refers to other literary compositions on it, eg, by Tennyson. (PB)

A girl changes her mind, learns to ride a bike and cuts off her skirt when she realises no young men come calling. She is successful and becomes engaged. (PB)

Tale of girlhood friends' reunion during a visit; a confession of a lovers' quarrel which separated the hostess and her recently married husband on his first trip away; and the appearance of his loving ghost at the house at the same instant he died in Richmond. (PB)

A band of white troopers and an Indian scout encounter a band of Indians determined to kill them. A squall and Indian Joe's sagacious use of a box of matches turns the Indians' plans to roast the whites back on themselves. (PB)

Misogynist piece on women's weakness for dress, talking, making husbands miserable and cutting boys hair and suits badly. Purportedly a schoolboy's punishment essay. (PB)

A hardened convict is loved by a keeper's little child who reforms his nature. He dies one day in saving her from an on-coming train. (PB)

The narrator's bets - one on his own intuition and one on the advice of someone with inside knowledge - on the same race both pay off. Coincidence and the technicalities of betting. (PB)

Mississippi riverboat gambling tale. A young doctor nearly loses the money saved to marry on in a poker game - and only narrowly wins it back from a rigged game. (PB)

An elevator boy discurses on the responsibility of his job and the different ways people treat him. (PB)

A gipsy's prediction introduces a young girl Kitty to her lover, a sea captain, but warns her of sorrow by water. Kitty is scared of water in any case and relieved when her husband returns from the sea. She wants him to destroy a little blue boat he built for her, expecially when a daughter is born - but is grateful he doesn't when she uses it despite her terror to save their daughter from the river tide. (PB)

Sinclair and another Detective partial to roses jointly investigate the murder of an old man in his garden on the banks of the Yarra. His disinherited niece is a burglar's assistant, and the lover he had forbidden her to see a thief, but the evidence of a young street-boy, a former 'Herald' runner - points to the faithful old family servant. Detective rivalry included. (PB)

Mark Twain's humorous comments on poverty, his next book; and the need for the impulse for charity to coincide with the opportunity - how a preacher talked his cause into and out of $400 of Twain's money. (PB)

A wanderer returned to his hometown finds everyone in the bicycle business. (PB)

Utopian abstinence tale. A traveller returns to New York after 26 years in Africa to discover that prohibition has been introduced throughout the US and every facet of life - social conditions, work and strikes, politics etc - has been improved. (PB)

A swain's attempt to gain his lady's approval by his carving skills is ignominiously defeated ... (PB)