Outrageous Fortunes : The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son George

When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place. But when Mary died in 1911, her identity was nearly lost.

In Outrageous Fortunes, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune’s astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son, George. While Mary was writing crime, George was committing it, with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories, crime fiction meets true crime, and Melbourne’s literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.