Mary Louise in the Country

MP3 Audio CD. First published in 1916 in the Bluebird Books series, Mary Louise in the Country features one of Baum?s most popular characters, a sixteen-year-old girl, somewhat spoilt and quite well-off, but smart and witty.

The story of the novel starts when Mary Louise and her grandfather move to the countryside, to a serene place called Cragg?s Crossing to spend the summer there. The place proves to be not so quiet after all ? they not only meet various people, all of them interesting and colorful personalities, but they also happen on a mystery the elucidation of which is undertaken by one of the best adolescent detectives in literature, Mary Louise herself.

Baum was ? and still is ? primarily known as the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the many sequels he wrote to the amazing story of Oz. Few know that he also wrote numerous fantasy stories and novels for kids and teenagers, his Bluebird series being just as popular and appreciated at the time they came out as the Oz stories. Baum published his Bluebird novels under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne. The series comprises novels that feature various teenage detectives, Mary Louise being only one of them. The character of the clever, funny, mischievous girl is based on Baum?s favorite sister and it appears in eight novels published between 1916 and 1922, Mary Louise in the Country being the second in the series.

Though the series enjoyed great popularity during the second decade of the 20th century, the character of Mary Louise was considered to be way too tame for readers, and the publishers of the series decided to have her replaced with a more unconventional female detective called Josie O?Gorman, a character introduced in the Mary Louise novels who became the protagonist in the last two stories of the Bluebird series.