Miss Cayley's Adventures

At nineteen, with her stepfather dead and precisely twopence to her name, Lois Cayley faces a choice: become a schoolteacher like every respectable Victorian girl, or disappear into the world and have actual adventures. She chooses adventure. What follows is a breathless romp across continents. Lois travels from London to Germany, Italy, Egypt, and India, matching wits with con artists, charming dukes, and the occasional cantankerous old lady who needs company on her spa trip. She solves problems with nerve and improvisation. When her true love, Harold Tillington, is accused of forgery and faces prison, Lois must unravel a diabolical conspiracy to save him. What makes this late-Victorian gem endure is its defiant spirit. Lois refuses the quiet, dependent life prescribed to women of her era. She wants excitement, not safety. She wants autonomy, not marriage as rescue. It's an adventure story that happens to feature a woman who refuses to wait for someone to save her. Instead, she saves them.