AustLit

US tale of love, jealousy, murder and the supernatural. An American artist discovers the long-missing final masterpiece of his French ancestor in the home of a US family met on a sketching tour. It is painted over and while trying to restore it he falls in love with the daughter of the house. They marry and he finds himself gripped by mad jealousy - finally murdering his wife - and thus discovering the secret hidden in the old painting ... Well-written and paced tale of obsession. (PB)

A man's jealousy loses him the woman he loves - and when he discovers his mistake her love is dead. (PB)

Horror tale with a Spanish flavour. The narrator reveals his increasing obsession with decapitation and whether or not will remains in the mind after severence. This leads to the murder of his closest friend, a man of great mind and will power. Well-paced and structured, slight melodrama in the increasing sense of obsession. (PB)

A Melbourne child-wife reveals to her squatter husband a month after their marriage that she only married him for his money. Two months separated in Melbourne and a bushfire on their station soon teach her deeper feelings. Slight, predictable. A crippled but pure-souled housekeeper plays a minor role. (PB)

Tale of a happy romance and an acid mother-in-law, set largely in an English village. A marriage between a squire's agent and his sweetheart is delayed three years, till she is 21, due to her mother's opposition. The woman's terrible character causes her to be banned from the house after the marriage and at her death she leaves them an actress aunt's clothes and stage jewels to taunt them. A few years later in a period of misfortune the jewels are found to be real ... Light, pleasant. Character study of mother-in-law very bitter. (PB)

Four soldiers on the US frontier are killed while trying to get a message to Fort Lyon from the Arkansas - they must shoot themselves when battle is hopeless rather than wait for the Indians. (PB)

Homage to evenings spent courting thus. (PB)

Sinclair is stationed briefly in an isolated villaged in the Victorian Ranges during a bushranger panic. He becomes involved in a bushranger's revenge, with his daughter's aid, on the daughter of the carpenter who had him imprisoned years before and who is to marry his daughter's step-son ... Includes the carpenter making a coffin - unknowingly - for his own daughter ... (PB)

Domestic sketch. The difficulties of finding a replacement for an unsatifactory female servant. The character of the lady of the house is as difficult as the expectations of the applicants. (PB)

Brief descriptions of cases confined to a lunatic asylum - all persons who lived by their own sensible values rather than society's. Humour. (PB)

Chronological account of a husband's three days alone after a quarrel with his wife, and his domestic incapacity. (PB)