First published in two parts between 1869 and 1870, An Old Fashioned Girl follows Polly, a simple country girl, during two visits to the big city of Boston. Polly’s stay with the rich and sophisticated Shaw family shows her that flashy clothes and loud personalities are the characteristics by which many frivolous city folk are judged. Polly in turn teaches her city friends that simplicity and honesty are the things that really matter.

First published in 1905, Elizabeth von Arnim no doubt wrote Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight as a fairy tale for her children’s amusement. It tells the story of Priscilla, a popular and celebrated German princess, who grows tired of her lavish and pampered life. Through the instruction of her mentor, Herr Fritzing, she learns there is a wide and varied world outside the castle walls, and she yearns to escape. The marriage proposal of an eligible prince makes Priscilla realize that if she wants to escape the life she secretly detests, now is the time.

Short stories have to be good to drag me away from my beloved novels and Katherine Mansfield’s short stories are very good indeed. This selection stories includes some set in Europe and others set in Mansfield’s native New Zealand. I particularly like the New Zealand stories and these include “The Garden Party”, “Her First Ball”, and “Prelude”. Mansfield’s style is to show and not tell, and many of her stories have a dark or ominous twist which left this reader longing to know more.

First published in 1880, this second novel in the “Mr. Gryce” series lays out two apparently unrelated mysteries to which Mr. Gryce assigns “Q” to investigate. Green introduced Q in The Leavenworth Case as rather a shadowy character who gets the job done in spite of, or more likely because of, his strangeness. The Leavenworth Case has been Anna Katharine Green’s best-known and best-selling novel. However, owing to the storytelling prowess of Q and a compelling story-within-a-story told by Holman Blake, A Strange Disappearance was for this reader even more enjoyable than the first.