AustLit

Domestic tale of a husband's education in a wife's needs. Marriage as a partnership between a successful lawyer and his neglected wife becomes a reality only after her near-death from overwork. (PB)

Nellie's flight from the prospect of life in a refectory is stopped by a season in society - and when her clerical suitor reappears in her local church she is happy to accept him. Light. (PB)

Tale of brotherly love and revenge on the race track. A jockey repays his employer's cruelty - which killed his younger brother - by winning a race he was instructed to lose. His employer loses his fortune and the jockey loses an arm and a leg. (PB)

Briefly sentimental tale of an orphaned street-seller given a home by a kind lady who overhears her wish to hold a doll for just a minute on Christmas day - also on her own birthday. (PB)

A case of wife-poisoning. A doctor suspects a fellow doctor of poisoning his own wife slowly with arsenic so that he might marry his mistress. With the help of the wife's faithful nurse the crime is averted and the doctor kills himself ... Second doctor marries the widow. Slight competent tale. (PB)

An ageing preacher gains a pulpit to support his family by dyeing his hair. Prejudice of congregations for young ministers. Slight. (PB)

Romance of the English aristocracy: a woman's inheritance and a love lost and won. The narrator, Paul Lyndon, orphan son of an old friend of Hugh Stuart of Arne Hall loves unrequitedly his guardian's heiress Beatrice. She becomes engaged to the selfish neighbouring landowner, Lord Hardley. Only the reappearance of the real but coarse heir to Arne Hall allows Paul to reveal his love. Beatrice is no longer an heiress and Lord Hardley breaks his engagement. Happiness is reduced, comfort follows - until the estate is restored once more to Beatrice. Light well-written romance; conventional plot through narrator's character give some individuality of the literary dreamer type. (PB)

An old clock in a second-hand shop recounts its life with a farmer's family and its trip with the oldest daughter to the city. They are parted only when she dies. Cheery brief tale for all its emphasis on times past. (PB)

Odd little tale of England and gambling. A penniless gambler's son through a Christmas hamper, a letter steamed open, and cunning low friends wins a large sum on a horse race. When he begins to bet on his own account he is drugged, kidnapped, and framed for tampering with another horse. (PB)

Grandmother's reminiscences to her Australian grandchildren of her marriages, her convict husband and their grandfather. First married in Wales to a replacement school teacher, they journey to London on the way to Canada, and there she loses her husband on one of the new omnibuses. Convinced by a landlord that her husband is dead she accompanies a married couple to Australia. On the eve of marrying the later widowed husband (her audience's grandfather) she discovers her husband a convicted forger in Australia. He dies of his privations and she, after years of persuasion, finally marries her widowed suitor as arranged. Family tale; colourful, broad stokes. (PB)

A Vienese jeweller is robbed of a diamond cross through a two-part swindle involving a kleptomaniac widow. (PB)

A female child's skeleton found on the plains of West USA prompts reflections on how it got there and the terrible isolation of the girl's death. (PB)

Italian cut-throats are imprisoned on a yacht by a young English woman cruising the Mediterranean with her husband. She is left virtually alone on Christmas Eve when he dines with the British Vice-Consul - only a few sailors remain aboard in their own quarters and her dog has his throat cut. 'The fighting blood of a wild border strain runs hotly in her veins.' Light. (PB)

An American small-town miser has a change of heart when he dreams of his mother on Christmas Eve; and she reminds him of his debt of kindness to others. ('A Christmas Carol', US version). (PB)

Humorous English tale of a healthy young man's over-reaction to the news that he has a bad heart disease - and his subsequent discovery that his doctor is mad. Then he throws away his bath chair and marries his fiancee. Slight. (PB)

Light English tale of a jewel lost and found in a child's toy box. A lapidary reluctantly agrees to reset a beautiful diamond from a pendant dropped by his sister, a lady's maid, on Christmas Eve. The repaired ornament is lost and ruin stares the family in the face until his son produces it from Noah's Ark. (PB)

Domestic scene at 3 a.m. and a little boy's prattle as his father's tries to sleep. Tone of loving exasperation. (PB)