... By Thomas Cobb. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.) New book though it is, Mr. Thomas Cobb's latest volume is not likely to cause that besieging of the circulating libraries by literary dowagers and their grand-daughters of which Hazlitt writes so bitterly in one of his most caustic essays. However important such commonplace love-affairs as those dealt with by Mr. Cobb may be to the participants, they are ...

... . By J. H. Yoxai.L, M.P. Hu tch in son 6s.) Mr. Yoxall has aptly named his story a romance of 1899, for surely no better description could be found for this tale of the quondam tourist-guide, would-be conspirator, and wholly delightful Alain danger, with its setting of old-world Brisac, where even yet leisured labour, talkative toil, siesta rest, joyous forenoons, and charmed evenings ...

... . By Gilbhrt Parkf.r. {Me th lien.) is a volume of short stories of Canada by Sir Gilbert Parker, and when that is said little more, we think, is needed to com mend it to the reader. The familiar hand loses none ot its cunning, the eye none of its vision, the tongue of the born story-teller has not forgotten its magic. Open the book where you will, the life of the Far West starts into being ...

... . IT is rather hard upon the dramatic critics to invite them to investigate the conduct of characters, modern characters who take taxi-cabs, and are all Kings, Queens, Emperors, and sich. No doubt Mr. Besier, the author of Kings and Queens, knows all about the manners and customs of such exalted persons; but how are we to guess whether he portrays them correctly: even a study of the ...

... . 1. KIDER HAGGARD. (C asset I.) Had Mr. Rider Haggard's genius been com pelled to keep its native land, it would surely have found no congenial home in English town or country outside His Majesty's. Fortunately, there has been no such restriction, and its happiest ground has been Africa Africa old and new. His latest romance, , belongs to the past. Ancient Thebes and the great unmolested ...

... . By Marie Van Vorst. (Mills and Boon.) American towns, American ways, and American expressions place in what may at least be regarded as a bracing atmosphere. Should a lover meet his lady after long absence, and meet her married, Bully 1 he breathes in ecstasy. Bully the remark finds an English reader cold to the fine moment. But once hardened to the gosh and gollys and corkers, ...

... . By Dorothea Gerard. {Methuen. 6s.) Dorothea Gerard (Madame Longard de Longgarde) has hit upon a really striking idea for this novel-- that of a great doctor who kills off those of his patients whose family history shows any trace of hereditary disease. His dream is to purify humanity, so that posterity may be free from such scourges as cancer and consumption. Thanks to a. marvellous lous ...

... . By Roland Pbrtwbb. [John Murray.) There is something indescribably attractive about these nine incidents of Lord Louis' collecting career. There is something quite indescribably attractive about Lord Louis himself. Outside all the fun and thrill of his Transactions, if Mr. Pertwee had but achieved Lord Louis alone he would have produced a lovable work of art. The flavour of a blend of ...

... BELLAMY THI; MAGNIFI CENT AN EXTRAVAGANZA. By Roy Horniman. {Chat to and Windus. 6s.) The sub-title of Mr. Horniman's latest novel saves criticism a world of trouble. Bellamy the Magnificent is not only an extravaganza; it is as brightly written a piece of fooling as may be met with in a month's traffic of the circulating library. Even the tragedy at the end does nothing to alter the ...

... NEW TREASURE- SEEKERS. By K. Nksiut {Fisher Umvin. 6s It seems we are never to hear any more of that most engaging and high-spirited young family, the Bastables. For, at the very end of this book, Your affectionate author, Oswald Bastable, says that it is the last story that the present author means ever to be the author of. It is positively cruel of Mrs. Bland, the more so that in one ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR. THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. IN two handsome volumes Mr. Justin McCarthy presents as with a series of pictures, sometimes brilliant and always interesting, of what is generally termed the Augustan Age of English History. The Reign of Queen Anne (Chatto and Windus) is no dry-as-dust historical compilation, full of minute but arid detail conscientiously laboured, neither ...

... . By Kathkrink Cecil Thurston. Rlachsvoori. 6s. The title is taken from the quotation In youth, we dream that life is a straight line later, we know it to be a circle in which the present presses on the future, the future on the past. When Anna Solny deserted her home, she tried to forget the old curiosity-shop in which she had spent her childhood, her father, who seemed to place her second ...