Mystery at Love's Creek — Betty Cavanna

When sixteen-year-old Chicago-bred Carlie Copeland is given an opportunity to spend a few weeks at her Uncle Ed's cattle ranch in the remote Outback of Australia, she couldn't be more thrilled.

But when she arrives at Love's Creek, Carlie is bitterly disappointed; for after living in bustling Chicago, she finds the dry, dusty ranch, with the nearest town forty miles away, boring and monotonous. To make things worse, a searing, seven-year drought had brought the ranch to the verge of bankruptcy.

Then one hot morning news comes of a bank robbery in Alice Springs -- the very same morning that Carlie's Uncle Ed had been refused a bank loan, and the same day a trail of stolen travelers' checks leads the police straight to his ranch!

Carlie, desperately determined to clear her relatives of suspicion, finds herself plunged headlong into a frightening and bizarre mystery, and into her first love as well.