Grace Livingston Hill: Part Three

The Red Signal (published in 1919). Highly improbably story that includes German Spies posing as farmers! How fun is that? Hidden bunkers and wireless sets. Here's the blurb found on the front flap of the dust jacket:

When David Stevens, engineer on freight No. 5, snatched Hilda Lessing from the path of a fast moving express, he did not know that there was the making of a heroine in her slender frame, nor that fate was to entangle this simple child with himself in a web of plots and danger, from which she was to rescue them at the risk of her life. But some of the most breath-taking adventures of all fiction lie between the consummation of her happiness and the foiling of a diabolical plot threatening the safety of the nation.

The Best Man (1913). This was the second GLH that I ever read. Grace's grasp of espionage was delightfully vague and mysterious. Gordon is on an important mission that is vital to national security...or something. He obtains the encrypted message from the bad guys, but then has to run for his life. He runs right into a wedding and is mistaken for the groom (whom no one has seen for years). He 'marries' Celia - who didn't want to marry the real groom - she was being coerced. The two fall in love while being chased back to Washington D. C..

The Strange Proposal (1935). The Strange Proposal has one of the strongest heroines in Hilldom. Mary Elizabeth Wainwright is rich, John Saxon is not. He's religious, she's not. He's a struggling young doctor, she's a heiress. He has two feeble parents (who who own a struggling orange grove in Florida!), she has one hearty father (who is a wealthy businessman in Boston). What makes this one fun is the fact that the guy proposes to her the very first time they meet...when he thinks she's someone else.