Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote four romantic mysteries, the last being Marcia of the Doorstep, the book you hold in your hands. Written in 1924 and the longest novel he ever wrote (at 125,000 words) it has remained unpublished until now. It is a novel of blackmail and society high and low, of shipwreck and a desert island, of Broadway and Hollywood, of stunt flying and coyote hunting, all intertwined with the life of a “doorstep baby” who grows up to be a fine young lady and falls in love with her own brother. Mingled in with all this are unmistakable reflections of the author's own life and experience, from being a business failure to cruising the Pacific. The story is full of Burroughs' own ideas and ideals, providing him with a forum for his political and social beliefs. Like all of his other stories, it too is full of coincidences and melodrama. Once again Edgar Rice Burroughs instills autobiographical characteristics in his characters. Marcus Aurelius Sackett displays his own penchant for investing in faulty business ventures. Clara Sackett is most assuredly based on his wife Emma, who always endured his erratic fortunes with grace. Marcia's sweet disposition must certainly be based on his daughter Joan, who at one time wanted to be an actress. This was to be Burroughs' last rebellious protest against the constant demand for Tarzan or other fantasy stories that he felt he was being forced to write. He would occasionally write in other genres after that, but mostly short stories, and the occasional novelette which he was unable to sell. With excellent characterizations of a proud but lovable Shakespearean actor, and a shyster lawyer to end all shyster lawyers, Marcia of the Doorstep comes through as perhaps the best of all the “realistic” novels which Edgar Rice Burroughs penned about modern life in the United States.