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Six years before she wrote Little Women, and in financial straits, Louisa May Alcott entered Pauline's Passion and Punishment, a novelette, in a newspaper contest. Not only did it win the $100 prize, but, published anonymously, it marked the first of the series of blood & thunder tales that would provide her livelihood for years. For as she said, They are easy to 'compoze' & are better paid than moral...works. The gruesome, passionate stories reveal a darker side of Alcott. Published anonymously or under the pseudonym of A. M. Barnard, they appeared in weeklies over a century ago. In their mastery of suspense and psychological drama, and in their embodiment of a startlingly intense - if oblique - feminism, they attest to the multifaceted genius of their creator. Pauline's Passion and Punishment features a woman who is scorned by her lover and left with her fury and her desire for revenge. The male hero of The Mysterious Key must unearth secrets hidden away in a family tomb if he is to realize true love. Mysterious pasts and all-too-present jealousies conflict for some surprising effects on the holiday mood in The Abbot's Ghost. And Behind a Mask tells the chilling story of a woman thwarted by love, whose main motivation becomes her desire to dominate an entire family.