Aunt Jane's nieces make their debuts in New York's Fashionable Society and solve a mystery.

Aunt Jane's Nieces is the title of a juvenile novel published in 1906, and written by L. Frank Baum under the pen name "Edith Van Dyne." Since the book was the first in a series of novels designed for adolescent girls, its title was applied to the entire series of ten books, published between 1906 and 1918. The novel "is genuinely original and interesting. It focuses on three adolescent girls, two of whom combine basic good character with ugly traits not usually found in fiction for young girls. Baum starts with a trite situation that could occasion prosy moralizing and gives it several original twists." The rest of the novels in the series feature travel, adventures, accidents, a kidnapping and rescue, romances, and a marriage for Louise. The final novel, Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross, was originally published in 1915.

Chapter I UNCLE JOHN'S DUTY "You're not doing your duty by those girls, John Merrick!" The gentleman at whom this assertion was flung in a rather angry tone did not answer his sister-in-law. He sat gazing reflectively at the pattern in the rug and seemed neither startled nor annoyed. Mrs. Merrick, a pink-cheeked middle-aged lady attired in an elaborate morning gown, knitted her brows severely as she regarded the chubby little man opposite; then, suddenly remembering that the wrinkles might leave their dreadful mark on her carefully rolled and massaged features, she banished them with a pass of her ringed hand and sighed dismally. "It would not have mattered especially had the poor children been left in their original condition of friendless poverty," she said. "They were then like a million other girls, content to struggle for a respectable livelihood and a doubtful position in the lower stratas of social communion. But you interfered. You came into their lives abruptly, appearing from those horrid Western wilds with an amazing accumulation of money and a demand that your three nieces become your special protégées. And what is the result?" The little man looked up with a charming smile of good humored raillery. His keen gray eyes sparkled as mischievously as a schoolboy's. Softly he rubbed the palms of his hands together, as if enjoying the situation.

Reproduction of the original: Aunt Jane s Nieces in Society by L. Frank Baum

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Aunt Jane's nieces go to work campaigning for their cousin who is running for Congress against a powerful incumbent, and solve a mystery along the way.