AustLit

An English nobleman saves a poor girl's hair from a niggardly hairdresser. (PB)

English light romance of titles disguised and motives mistaken. A baronet is mistakenly shot in the arm by a servant discharging a firearm in a fog, and colludes with the circumstances which present him as a piano tuner. He is attracted to one of his carers but all goes wrong when she overhears his discussion with a friend of his fear of calculating mothers and mercenary maidens. He is suitably chastened and leaves in despair - but all is eventually reconciled at a London ball. An engagement and wedding is the result. (PB)

Romantic tragedy. Former lovers meet at a seaside resort but find, even with the woman's father dead who had prevented their earlier marriage, that they still must part, for her father had killed her lover's brother accidentally in a gaming quarrel. He had died full of remorse but his daughter was now dying herself - forgiveness and separation alone remained. (PB)

Humorous toast by a Scots fire brigade superintendent to Queen Victoria. (PB)

An Englishman's determined attempts to secure the escape of a gentlemanly prisoner from Port Arthur is achieved with the help of a Tasmanian merchant/smuggler and his men and ship, and a sexton responsible for burials in the convict settlements cemetery. Two attempts are necessary, both are discovered with loss of life for many - but the prisoner and his friend escape only to be revealed as husband and wife. (PB)

A young New York lawyer entrusted to deliver cash to a country client becomes lost and is forced to stay overnight in a dubious hotel. He saves himself from the usual plot to rob and murder him by setting a neighbouring room alight and burning down the inn. (PB)

An old man's fall into a well on the farm he has brought them to live in brings their desired result of a return to the city. Character of a cranky old man - Mr Growley. (PB)

Station romance. An Englishman, a new chum down on his luck, trades his clothes with a swagman in an attempt to overcome suspicion and get a job. He is hired on a station where he falls in love with the owner's daughter but raises the ire of his rival, the manager, who procures his dismissal. The young woman refuses the manager who - along with the banks - secured her father's ruin and early death. The woman and her sister attempt to support their mother as seamstress and governess drudge but are near starvation when she busks as a last resort and her old suitor discovers and rescues her. (PB)

Racing tale of a family curse avoided. A London solicitor is sold a horse, a race favourite, a few days before a race on the understanding that he must sell it back at a £1000 profit a few days after.

Set in Zanzibar on Africa's East coast, a young hot-tempered midshipman's visit to a slave market results in his own sale as a slave up-country when he inteferes on behalf of a young girl and her brother. Only his rescue by friendly Arab saves him. (PB)

Set in a bush township. Hotel-keeper Mag Carey, ugly of face and temper, is married to handsome Dan Blake and they are unhappy. He married her for her money from a sweep win and has an innocent second wife and son - the wife believing she is the only one. He fears discovery and revenge by Mag and arranged with the help of a friend to move away with his wife and son, stealing some of his wife's money to do it. But Mag is murdered the night he was to leave and he is arrested and tried for her murder - until a witness proves it was Mag's own brother ... The 'innocent' wife is remarried and starts a new life in California. (PB)

Neighbourly comments in suburbia enrage a man as he cuts his grass. (PB)