Gaining much richness from Lucy Sussex's own research into the identity of the elusive Mary Fortune, an Australian writer of mysteries who anticipated Conan Doyle in many ways, The Scarlet Rider follows Melvina "Mel" Kirksley into her first job after university. As a researcher for Roxana Press, an all-woman publishing firm specializing in fiction, her first assignment is to find out who wrote The Scarlet or, a Mystery of the Gold-Diggings. The mystery novel was serialized anonymously in twenty-nine issues of an obscure outback journal in the 1860s. It is a major historical literary find, and Roxana Press will be the first to publish it in book form - provided it can identify the author, and provided the author is a woman. As Mel dives into the project, unexpected friction develops with her lover, a medical student who is home all too seldom, and with her best friend, whose fragile health keeps her on welfare. Mel thought they'd be happy for her; instead, they seem to resent her new income and interest. But pressing on, consulting her elderly aunt and a helpful librarian, she solves an acrostic in the novel's dedicatory poem to come up with the name..."Melvina." Mel begins to feel a spiritual connection to this fascinating and elusive woman and even to encounter her in ever more realistic dreams. Who is the rider, and who is the ridden? Is Mel being possessed by the Victorian Melvina? It begins to look that way as Mel's love affair ends, her friend betrays her, her aunt dies, and she is suddenly homeless. Ahead lie thorny questions of gender, race, and new romance. Or is Mel the rider - entering into a new and strongly independent life, becoming the Mel she was perhaps always meant to be, thanks to the increasingly powerful intervention of a spirit from another time?