AustLit

The story is the supreme test in a book. Each volume in The Crime Circle is carefully chosen not by an author's popularity by name alone, but also by the supreme test of its quality as a story that holds and thrills.

(Source: Josephine Plain, The Secret of the Sandbank, 1935.)

'Julie Purvis, alone after her mother's death, goes to live with her Breton mother's family, until then unknown to her. The story tells of her struggle to achieve intimacy and loving comprehension among those whose blood is hers, but are alien to her in temperament and education. Her efforts to adapt herself to her new environment meet with little success, and she Is finally convinced that her real happiness will be found, not with these strangers to her. but in the country of her birth, which has formed arid can satisfy her necessities.'

Source:

'New Books: Lismore School of Arts', Northern Star, 18 September 1934, p.11.

'The setting of "No Escape" is a small township in New South Wales, once a goldminers' paradise, now the unprogressive centre of a pastoral district. An Italian doctor named Leo Gherardi, settled there with his wife Teresa and their small son Leo, had been forced to leave Italy for political reasons just at the beginning of a promising career in medicine. His wife in accompanying him temporarily gave up a brilliant future on the concert platform. But both were convinced that absence from their beloved Italy would only be an unpleasant interlude during which they would save money to have Leo's case reviewed and his sentence annulled. This hope alone buoyed them up when they began life in the township of Banton.'

Source:

'An Italian Doctor's Life in Australia', The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 April 1932, p.4.