This premium quality edition contains the complete and unabridged original version of The Childerbridge Mystery, printed on heavyweight, 60# bright white paper in a generous 5 1/2"x8 1/2" format, with page headers and a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design.

The Childerbridge Mystery...

... The son of a hardworking country doctor, it had fallen to his lot to emigrate to Australia at the early age of sixteen. He had not a friend in that vast, but sparsely-populated, land, and was without influence of any sort to help him forward. When, therefore, in fifty years' time, he found himself worth upwards of half-a-million pounds sterling, he was able to tell himself that he owed his good fortune not only to his own industry, but also to his shrewd business capabilities. ...

A widower with a grown son and daughter, William Standerton, this self-made man, places his Australian holdings in the hands of carefully selected managers and, taking his children with him, returns to England to try his hand at genteel country living. Deciding that Childerbridge Manor will suit his needs, he settles into the estate despite local lore which holds it to be haunted. But once the family takes up residence, the trouble starts. The ghost - or ghosts - seem to be both real and unfriendly, and a menacing secret has followed him from Australia, along with the villanous man who holds the key to that secret.

William Standerton will meet his fate in Childerbridge Manor, and an unexpected twist or two will lie along the path to solving the mystery of his death and uncovering the dark secret of his life.

An enjoyable classic "murder-in-the-manor" mystery in the traditional British mold, this relatively short novel does not have a particularly complex plot, but does have all the elements mystery fans expect - a romance, a murder, an heroic young man and a rather stodgy detective both involved in solving the mystery, a bit of suspense - but typical of Boothby's work the story takes on an almost gothic tone with elements and atmospherics such as a more or less malevolent ghost or two lurking in a brooding old manor house, and a dark and perhaps unsavory family secret in the background to add a second mystery to the story.

Guy Newell Boothby

Guy Newell Boothby (1867-1905) was a prolific Australian novelist and writer, noted for sensationalist fiction and best known today for the Dr. Nikola series. Born in Adelaide, Boothby was the son of Thomas Wilde Boothby, a member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly, and the grandson of Benjamin Boothby, a judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia. When Boothby was six he and his mother traveled to England and he was educated at Warminster School in Salisbury and Christ's Hospital, London.

He returned to Australia at the age of 16 in 1883, and his family's political ties led to his appointment as private secretary to the mayor of Adelaide. Boothby found the work uninteresting and quit. He subsequently traveled across Australia with his brother, and this journey became the basis for his first published work, On the Wallaby: or, Through the East and Across Australia (1894). Boothby's early works dealt mainly with Australian life, but he soon turned to genre fiction, often primarily with an occult theme.

One of the most widely-read and financially successful writers of his era, Boothby published over 50 novels in a career that spanned just over ten years before he died at age 38 after contracting influenza.