LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 170, 19 July 1924, Page 18

LITERARY.

j "Black Oxen," by Gertrude Atherton, ' has been added to Mr. Murray's fiction library at two shillings net. Its theme is the rejuvenation of Mary Ogden. Mr. Le Queux's inexhaustible facility | for concocting clever plots has found a I now outlet in "Fine Feathers" (Stanley Paul). It is the story of a criminal whose beautiful daughter found her way by gradations, from nurse girl to shop assistant, chorus girl, and finally by marriage, to the peerage. In the course :of her progress she suffers blackmail i from a former lover, whose mouth is ! ultimately closed in tragic fashion. '! '"'Silver Star-Dust" is the title of Cecil Adair's new novel—a love story of the type which this author of the | "Joy of Life" novels has made famous. I The verses in it have been specially i written by Miss Ernestine Talbot Reed : (daughter of Sir Kdward Reed). The ; incidents of the story occur in England and on the Continent, and involve the deliberate murder of the heir to an ! earldom in order to prevent disgrace 1 i from falling upon an ancient house. I The publishers are Stanley Paul and Co i "Lossie of the Mill," by E. Everett j Green (Stanley Paul), is the romance '. ■of an artist's daughter, who, through an accident to her father, had been com- ■' pelled to accept work in a silk mill. Here her beauty attracts the attention both of the proprietor's son and the mill I foreman, who become suitors for her ! hand. Out of these rivalries Lossie beI comes entangled in certain mysterious I happenings, is abducted and rescued, and j passes through a variety of thrilling experiences before happinoss is attained. "The Rangers' Code," by Johnston I McCulley (G. H. Watt, per Dymock, !Sydney), is a story of the West. It describes the adventurous life of exRanger Ganley, in his capacity of [deputy-sheriff in the county of which Caettisvillo was the chief town, a place ' i ruled by a gang of bad men, who I fleeced workers from ranches and ' mines. The story tells what Gantley ' i did to those desperadoes, how he met I I a girl he learned to love, how he met ' another who learned to love him, how he showed himself to be all man under most trying circumstances. The author knows the country and the people of of whom he writes with graphic and virile pen. • To the new translations of works by Alexandre Dumas, in Stanley Paul's International Library, ha_ been added "Love and Liberty." The story deals with the revolution in Naples, and the j part which Admiral Lord Nelson took in suppressing it, and in delivering the patriot Caracciolo for execution. Lady Hamilton takes an active place in the drama. Mr. R. S. Garnett, editor of this series of translations, quotes Southey's "Life of Nelson," in which the great seaman is charged with treachery and falsehood respecting the surrender of the patriots. He adds, "In Dumas' thought, Nelson acted as a man under the spell of a Circe." The story is full of exciting incidents. "The Race," by William McPeo (Seeker, pets Dymock, Sydney), chronicles the sayings and doings of a semi-rural district of North London. The central I figures are the daughters of a schooli master who has lost his grip through an j accident which left him a nervous wreck. Outstanding among theso girl 3is the I imaginative Hazel, who graduates from i a beginning as assistant in a draper's shop to the position of a successful writer of sentimental fiction. But Lena also develops an unexpected strain of independence and runs away from home, upon the suggestion of an artist at Chelsea, where she obtains a footing as a model. Two engineering students, widely different in character, considerably disturb the equanimity of a somewhat somnolent suburban society. "An Outpost Wooing," by Nora K. Strange (Stanley Paul), gives the reader I a vivid impression of the life of a settler in British East Africa. Joan Hervcy, about whose love experiences, first in India and afterwards at Nairobi, in the Kenya Colony, the incidents of the novel chiefly gather, is a girl of spirit and independence. She breaks off an advantageous engagement with an officer in the Indian Civil Service, because she ' finds it impossible to surrender herself in marriage without love, and later Bhe almost yields herself to the wiles of a philanderer and hedonist, who openly disavows any marital intentions. That she finally finds happiness with a good man is more the result of good fortune than through her own capability to manage her life on prudent lines, which had been her unwavering conviction when she resolved to make a career for herself. The diary of G. H. P. Muhlhauser, Lieut., R.N.R., who cruised round the world in the Amaryllis, a yawl of 28 I tons gross and 7_ tons net measurements, has been published by John Lane. The j author died shortly after landing in j England from his long and adventurous I voyage, and the present book, which ! includes extracts from his diary and I letters which he wrote to his friends, is prefaced with a memoir by E. Keble ChatI terton. Lieutenant Muhlhauser sailed j from Plymouth in September, 1920, for [Panama, by way of the West Indies. After passing through the canal, he took in water in the Galapagos, and then made the long stretch to the Marquesas in twenty-six days; so to Sj'dney, through the South Sea Islands, on to New Zealand, and 'back home by way of Lifu, Efate, Epi, Ambrym, AraghAragh, Espiritu Santo, and Tulagi, and eventually by Timor; Singapore, Colombo, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. He reached Dartmouth in July, 1923, after taking his ship 31,000 miles. He started for the West Indies with three shipmates, who had responded to an advertisement. There they left him, as had been arranged. For the next stage, through Panama and across the Pacific, his only companions were a young San Bias Indian from Central America, and Stephane, a French lad with a dash of colour in him. The Indian could not rpad the compass, and his knowledge of English was not sufficient for him to understand his captain "very often." The crew were changed from time to time. A South Sea Islander replaced the Indian, but without putting the captain in easier communication with the crew. Muhlhauser did all the technical work himself, including that connected with the engine, and he had all the responsibility and anxiety. "Had a mighty •sleep," is the entry at the end of the 1300-mile run to Suez—done in five weeks. One of Muhlhauser's shipmates said of the short time that he was with him that he would not part with the experience for a million dollars, nor repeat it for the same money; but Muhlhauser, as he came up to Ushant homeward-bound, was thinking of Ambrym, and planning new trips.

"One Who Passed By,"- by Thomas Cobb (Stanley Paul), places in the crucible of a stricken conscience a very straight and honourable man who, believing that the woman he had loved, and who had blundered into a miserable marriage with a dissipated brute, was on the verge of suicide, left the husband to drown, when he had accidentally fallen into deep water. Remorse and self-condemnation prevent him from marrying the woman when she is thus secured in her freedom, and both, intensely in lov e with each other, act at cross-purposes until an unexpected discovery solves the problem which had been driving them frantic.