Price Warung (1855-1911) was one of colonial Australia's most popular fiction writers. This selection showcases the best of Warung's gruesome tales of Australia's penal settlement founding and sardonic yarns of early steamboat traffic on the Murray River, and includes The Secret Society of the Ring, a novella set on Norfolk Island, the darkest corner of the convict system. With a new introduction that sets Warung in the context of his time and place, this volume reintroduces his meticulously researched work to a new generation of readers.