AustLit

An English workhouse Christmas visitor, a stage winter, meets an old man who had once been a foremost theatre clown and hears the tragedy of his accident on stage and his subsequent poverty and renunciation of the woman he loved. Her rise as a dancer and actress is followed at a distance and he contacts her only after his death in a letter. Simple; warm. (PB)

Abuse of a friendship gains Tom Hardup a fiver. (PB)

A Londoner's account of a terrible couple of days locked in a dentist's chair over Christmas in the 1860s when the dentist suffered a sudden cataleptic fit. Mild psychological horror tale. (PB)

Tale in two sections; first the reluctant adoption of a child from the streets of Alexandria, Virginia, by a soldier on his way to the front; the second the child's accidental death in the war. Tale of brotherly affection and pathos. (PB)

Romance of a true and a false love. Vivia Durley twice falls in love with handsome flirtatious Frank Trenton - at her mother's country house where he is a summer lodger and on a visit to her aunt in town. But it is only when she marries the noble squire John Marsdene that she truly learns what love is ... Pleasant. (PB)

Once a man is satisfied a watch is worthless he is happy to put it in his wife's Christmas stocking. (PB)

A grandfather's tale of a Christmas Eve spent in the south of Scotland as a commercial traveller in the 1830s. A night in an isolated inn with a fellow traveller results in a midnight struggle with an intruder - a dream caused by three helpings of Christmas pudding. Cheerful easy tale, well-sustained. (PB)

An old Scottish ferryman's account of his youthful romance, opposed by his sweetheart's mother, and of his final meeting with her ghost on the bank of the Loch on the night fixed for their elopement. Slight; touch of the supernatural. (PB)

Childhood romance rejected but found again once life's lessons are learned. Mira Mansfield, headstrong adopted daughter of Howard Mansfield, refuses to marry her childhood companion but elopes with another. He proves, too late, to have been interested only in her fortune and years of suffering and poverty follow. Long after his death their daughter, Faith, meets her mother's old suitor on the street and brings him home ... Slight; predictable. (PB)

Set on the coast, Sinclair visits a small township in pursuit of a close friend and fellow detective who had disappeared while on the track of a thief absconded from Melbourne. His body is found and suspicion points to the absconder (not buried in the grave that bears his name) and his sister but they disappear from the region. Only in 1865 is the explanation found - involving the absconder's younger and mentally impaired brother. (PB)

Poorly realised piously exemplary tale of a woman led from the socially-gilded life of convention to works of charity by her brother. Rewarded by the prayers of those she has helped. [Some idea of social utility nevertheless.] (PB)

Young Jack Fenton's love for bonny Alice Low is disturbed for a time by an infatuation for his rich, young, beautiful widowed employer. Her rejection of him and an attack of typhoid fever teach him the value of faithful love. Light. Plot conventional but characterisation etc. well-drawn. (PB)

Their first Christmas in Dunedin, New Zealand looks very unhappy for a couple and their baby, born after arriving from England. Unemployment and injury have reduced them to penury when baby is employed for use in a theatrical production and her salary pays for their dinner and changes their luck. Slight; air of reminiscence. (PB)

A San Francisco bank clerk about to take a holiday in the Washington Territory near Seattle assists a young woman who needs to cash a cheque in order to return home. Due to philanthropy she is short of funds. During his holiday they fall in love, though she is engaged to her jealous guardian ... Light, pleasant, unexceptional. (PB)

A new-born baby's death is unsolved, a bloody stone nearby casting suspicion on the faithful cook Emily, the nurse and Mr Staverton's ward. He loved but coud not marry her because of a promise to his spoiled and exacting wife on her deathbed that he would not marry again while their child lived. family honour, loyalty and hatred. The secret is revealed on an undertaker's servant's deathbed. (PB)