AustLit

Serio-comic tale of an orphaned Frenchman whose persistent efforts to do good in life reap only evil and misfortune. Lightly tragic. (PB)

To children; urging that they trust and turn to their mothers in all things. Moral sentiments. (PB)

A rich merchant learns too late the value of love which he had denied his first wife and he finds denied him by his second and brilliant young wife. A terrible death ends his empty life. Stilted and thinly realised. (PB)

Light romance. Bessie Carlton vows that she will never marry a man with red hair but fate and her friends' plot result in the loss of her bet. Pleasant. (PB)

English tale of a country visitor who nearly loses her engagement ring and her life to a prowling thief to whom she had been kind. Only her dog and her courage save her and her aunt's silver. (PB)

A successful Albany businessman falls in love with a girl he meets during holiday in the country. He can not picture her in New York society and hesitates to propose - until she comes to New York herself. She is the belle of the season and seemingly untouchable ... Light. (PB)

English society satirical romance. A clever mother and an obliging high-living female cousin reveal the unsuitability of Lord Purefoy's fiancée to him during a weekend visit. Light. Status distinctions marked. (PB)

Mr and Mrs Fraud's lack of enjoyment and their social falseness on their departure. (PB)

English travellers' tale. Entrusted with the delivery of a precious diamond to Cannes, Mr. Portman Brown eludes a suspicious looking man across Europe. The crisis comes in a railway tunnel in Switzerland - but it is only at a dinner party on his return that he recognises his shadower as a neighbour. Humour; mistaken identity. (PB)

English tale of madness and assumed identity. A friend's pretty wife is totally unlike the youthful self known to school companions and villages. When she returns with her husband to her estate she eventually decides to sell it because of the comments of everyone on the change in her. On the eve of their departure the real mistress of the estate appears and exposes her as her former nurse. The imposter goes mad and eventually dies in the same Swiss lunatic asylum to which she confined her former charge. Slight. (PB)

English society tale. A successful London barrister tells a house party the story of his first client - a woman he had induced to return to her husband rather than run off with another man. He never knew her identity until a late arrival, a highly respectable woman, acknowledges herself aloud to have been his first client. Light; pace well sustained. (PB)

A bank's depositors take their revenge upon the manager who has suspended payment - he is hung ... Light horror; neat and brief. (PB)

A private detective takes on a case with a wealthy man unhappy with his grasping second wife and family. After proving his sanity to the detective and enlisting his help in ensuring his sister and the invalid daughter of his first marriage receive their inheritance, the man commits suicide. Only after the daughter has successfully inherited does he reveal the suicide was false. All ends happily in the USA. (PB)

English race course murder. The murder of the bookie for whom he was clerking is solved two years later through gambling success and a good memory for a curiously marked note. Slight. (PB)

US tale of a newly married couple and the ingenious theft of their silver etc. by their 'honest' gem of a cook in a Pennsylvania mining town. Includes humorous account of their wedding ceremony and her early attempts at house-keeping. (PB)

English society tale. Procuring a dress for Ascot on straitened means leads Kate de Villars to buy a friend's dress - and the confusion caused by a note left in the pocket helps her win a bet. Light; a bit confusing. (PB)