Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 732

This issue of Beadle & Adams (November 2, 1892) features "Through Thick and Thin: A Romance of the Toils and Meshes of the Great City," serialized fiction depicting melodramatic urban intrigue in New York.

The narrative opens with a young woman named Marion Moreton arriving at Grand Central Depot late at night. Near Reservoir Square, two hired ruffians attempt to abduct her—apparently by mistake, intending to kidnap a woman named Fanny. Harold Harcourt, a successful bookbinder and inventor, rescues Marion by striking the assailants with his walking stick. While Harcourt fetches water, Marion overhears a confrontation between the man called Albert Guernsey (an ex-convict) and a woman he claims is his secret wife—the same Fanny the abductors sought.

Harcourt escorts the friendless Marion to his mother's home in Thirty-ninth Street. There she is shocked to recognize the woman from the Park altercation as Harcourt's own sister, establishing the story's central mystery linking the characters and their concealed histories.