From the cold and mountainous regions of Wyoming to the bright lights of the big city, The Branding Iron is the story of a remarkable woman, Joan Carver. Born of poor means, at a fairly young age Joan decides to leave her father and strike out on her own, but she is to face more difficulties and hardships than she had reckoned for, and the men she encounters on her way share different means of dealing with her; and she of them. She becomes her own individual, with a strong will and a determination to lead her life as she sees fit. As with many of Ms. Burt's stories, The Branding Iron is filled with unexpected surprises at each turn.
What secrets lay within the walls of the house by the lock? What secrets, if any, are held by the man who owns that mysterious house?
A body is found in a backwater creek not far from the house by the lock, but what leads Noel Stanton on a quest to determine who the killer might be is more than merely the disappearance of his American friend Harvey Farnham. He has reason to believe that the wealthy and influential owner of the house, Carson Wildred, might somehow be implicated in the coincidental disappearance and murder. But as Stanton's search progresses, he learns that his friend is safe and sound back in the U.S. and he therefore must learn more about the house itself with its peculiar construction, it's hidden passageways, and the peculiar smoke occasionally seen rising from its inaccessible areas. But everything is accounted for by the police, the servants, and Mr. Wildred during his investigation, leaving a most strange mystery left for Stanton to unravel.
Following a failed love affair in England, Lady Bridget O'Hara accepts an invitation to travel to colonial Australia as companion to Lady Rosamund Tallant, the wife of the newly-appointed governor of Leichardt's Land. In Leichardt's Town, Lady Bridget, also known as Biddy, is reunited with her old friend and collaborator, Joan Gildea, special correspondent for The Imperialist newspaper. While visiting Joan, Biddy meets Colin McKeith, a roughly-hewn, Scottish-born pioneer, drover, miner, sometime-politician, and magistrate in the north-eastern colony. Biddy and Colin fall in love: she with the adventure a life with him promises, he with an ideal of her noble heritage. In spite of Joan Gildea's misgivings, Biddy and Colin are soon married and leave Leichardt's Town to travel several days north to Colin's cattle property in a region known as the Leura. As Biddy and Colin embark on their life together, the contemporary issues of colonial Australia are revealed: the extreme environment, labour shortages and organisation, police brutality, immigration policy, and the plight of Australia's First Peoples. The couple discover fundamental differences in their perspectives on many topics. When Bridget's former love, Willoughby Maule, newly-widowed and affluent, visits her in the Leura, the couple's strained relationship is further tested.
This book presents a number of short, comedic sketches of a country life in middle America in the late 1800s. The hilarious twists and turns endear our adorable, naive married couple to the reader; and the orphan servant Pomona - dear, odd, funny Pomona! - is the focus of several of the stories. Imagine a honeymoon in a lunatic asylum, and you’ve got Rudder Grange!
Jane and Elsie Melville were raised by their kindly but eccentric uncle, Mr Hogarth who believed that women were just as good as men, and thus gave his nieces a boy's education. Upon his death, they find that he has left his entire fortune to his heretofore unknown son and left them only a small allowance, expecting them to make their own way in the world using the education he furnished them. Will the girls survive in a world that expects them, at the most, to become governesses?
It's described as "A SPRIGHTLY LOVE STORY" and it is written by F. H. Burnett, "one of the most charming among American writers!"
Toby Tyler tells the story of a ten year-old orphan who runs away from a foster home to join the traveling circus only to discover his new employer is a cruel taskmaster. The difference between the romance of the circus from the outside and the reality as seen from the inside is graphically depicted. Toby's friend, Mr. Stubbs the chimpanzee, reinforces the consequences of what happens when one follows one's natural instincts rather than one's intellect and conscience, a central theme of the novel.
The story revolves around Carter Brent, an alcoholic and gambler who had struck gold many times in the Yukon, but gambled and drank it away in Dawson; and Snowdrift, the half-breed who had spent her life with a wandering band of Indians in the frozen north country. Snowdrift had been raised by Wananebish, yet never knew who her father was, and yet Wananebish had somehow been able to send her to be schooled at a nearby mission.
The paths of this unlikely pair would cross in the barren lands of the Yukon where Brent had hopes of finding more gold, but it was well known that there was no gold in the region between Dawson and the MacKenzie. But Brent had that certain knack for striking gold, and due to his way of life, also had a certain knack for gambling and drinking it away. Plenty of action follows, while Brent performs his search with little or no money, runs across Snowdrift, and while a band of fellow gamblers who know of his luck follows closely on his trail, he must get his prize back to Dawson.
A young man, Owen Biddulph, is drawn to a beautiful young woman with a mysterious past... a past that seems to have returned to cause her disappearance! Is she his new found love or his nemesis? And who is this mysterious clergyman that warns him to avoid this young woman, at risk of his very life! What possible harm could this sweet young woman inflict? Written by one of the Masters of Mystery, William Le Queux.
An unlikely pair of wanderers they were; the orphan girl Lou and her travelling partner Jim Botts. Jim appeared in need of following some apparent 'rules' during the journey, while Lou seemed in need of better clothing, and perhaps some refinement. But who was most benefitting whom on the week-long journey from rural village to big city? And which of the two was willing to try anything once?
While aimed at youths, this series of tales of the just-opening West makes a rollicking good story for adults, too. Three teen-age boys, trained as telegraphers, manage to get themselves in and out of a wide variety of harrowing circumstances. Using their knowledge of Morse code, the science of telegraphs, and the operation of railroads, the boys stir in native resourcefulness, quick-thinking, and when the occasion demands it, raw courage - to effect rescues, thwart thieves, and solve mysteries. If Tom Swift had lived in the nineteenth century, he could not have had more exciting escapades!
A light-hearted account of a successful middle aged widower who chances to visit the small town in which he grew up to renew old acquaintances and perhaps reflect on his successes since his departure.
This visit, however, becomes far more to him than he would have imagined, as he finds that one of his dearest childhood girlfriends had died not long after his departure, and the widower envisions a relationship with none other than her daughter, who he senses to be her mother incarnate.
Kindred Spirits return for their Sophomore year at BriarwoodCollege. There's a new gril whoupsets the status quo. Introduction by Linda Velwest
American friends begin to summer in a beautiful French country house when WWI breaks out. They decide not to evacuate as the war encroaches. Their interactions are interwoven by the stories that they take turns telling after dinner each night to stimulate their nightly conversation and distract their thoughts from the war.
The Austrian nobility in Rome forms a very close circle, into which only those of high rank and wealth are admitted. They managed to get along with Cecil Sterzl, who, although not one of their own, is regarded as quite an amiable man. However, when he brings his younger sister Zinka into that circle, she is received very coldly at first, if at all. And when, with her fresh and unaffected manners, she wins one heart after another, especially that of the handsome Count Sempaly, she also excites jealousy and contempt in many members of that "set". They are not willing to give up the old notions of social rank and status without a fight...
Ossip Schubin [Aloisia Kirschner] is a now half-forgotten Austrian novelist of Bohemian descent, who has herself spent several years of her youth in Rome.