Green Shadows — Lucile Vernon Stevens

Green Shadows, Andrea Hughes was soon to learn, was a place of dark shadows and darker mystery. The estate had been willed to the pretty, dark-haired girl by a cousin whom she had seen just a few times in her life. Edwin Collins, Andrea's business-minded fiance, and their wedding plans would have to wait while Andrea drove to Green Shadows. For a letter from her late cousin Luella Bayles had specified, "You must live at Green Shadows and clear my name." The blood-colored brick estate, it seemed, harbored a murderous past, and Cousin Luella had been rumored to be the murderess!

When Andrea arrived at Green Shadows, her forebodings were intensified upon meeting its inhabitants. Like many a Southern mansion, Green Shadows contained a motley collection of relatives and hangers-on. There was Ted Austin, an aged cripple, and Lena March, a forbiddingly cold woman. There was mocking, insolently handsome Al Hudson, his wife, and a blonde named Dodie who claimed to be the long-lost Dorothea Bayles--rival to Andrea's claim to Green Shadows!

There was someone, however, whom Andrea could lean on in the midst of all these perplexities, Mark Penwood, a tall young man with red-gold hair, was the grandson of Andrea's lawyer. And as Andrea came to fear for her own safety, she found herself depending more and more on this handsome stranger.

Hero: Mark Penwood
Heroine: Andrea Hughes