Cirrus@Austlit

Newly-made parents spend their first night alone with their child, the new mother's worrying keeps husband and maid awake all night - only baby sleeps. (PB)

A poor but rising young barrister who also answers legal questions for a newspaper falls in love with a variety dancer and they become engaged. He then falls in love with a society girl but his true-hearted ballerina, forced to prosecute him for breach of promise, wins his heart again in the court room. The case is settled out of court. (PB)

Strongly historically based. The cruelty and torturous treatment of convicts detailed. A mutiny among a lime-pit convict gang is cruelly put down by the new commandant Price who is a tyrant. The convict rebellion led by James Westbrook failed and the leaders sentenced to death by hanging. Westbrook escaped with the help of a soldier and evades arrest, making several attempts to kill Price. A rebellion including some of the soldiers is mooted but Westbrook and his helpers are captured in a small boat battle at sea and later hanged. (PB)

Colourful little poetic piece on flowers, their meanings, Greek gods and goddesses associated. (PB)

Tale of London theatrical agents who swindle a modest young Oxford graduate out of his small income with false promises to produce his play. With the help of an old school fellow and a helpful actor the tables are turned. (PB)

Two orphaned brothers given an education and a start in life by a generous uncle both decide to help his daughter when he dies penniless. They both love her but after self-sacrifice by one and intending courtship by the other they discover she is already engaged. (PB)

Set on the Gulf of Mexico in the early 1800s. Legendary tale of Loup Bonsoir who sails into Biloxi and takes over the town with his rough piratical ways. His daughter the beautiful Aricie has been separated from her lover and pines for him until the village priest and townspeople pray for and assist her to rejoin him. Concludes with a chase between the lover's sloop and Bonsoir's beaten and decayed vessel Le Pelican. (PB)

French tale of a financier's ambition to have the king come and visit him. The cost of preparations first of an orchard then a hunting pack and finally a wife keep him busy - and the king never comes. (PB)

An orphaned girl is forced by sudden poverty to become a teacher in a distant country district. She is invited by a rich city friend to spend her Christmas holidays with her family - she and her friend's brother fall in love and her visit ends with a proposal - which the brother had stoutly denied would happen. (PB)

Captain Everleigh comes to visit a friend at his father's station and rescues his host's sister from a runaway horse. They fall in love but his proposal scares her young heart - and it is four years before he learns she has not married another and they meet again. Romance and marriage follow. Opening description of a huge forest being diminished by ring-barking. (PB)

Narrated in turn by Dean, and detectives Gault and Davis who investigated his murder in his Melbourne home. An abused wife, the disappearance of his son and heir, the machinations of his scheming 'devilish' housekeeper, and the wife's impersonation by her twin sister who is arrested in her place on suspicion of Dean's murder. (PB)