From -the Publishers.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 3 (Supplement)

From -the Publishers.

FICTION. Was It Yesterday? by David Horner; Flight from a Lady, by A. G. Macdonncl! (Macmlllan). No Arms, No Armour, by Robert D. Q. Ileiiriqucs (Nicholson and Watsoa). The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, by Leonard R. Gribble (llarrap). A Traveller in Time, by Alison Uttlcy (Faber and l-'abor). Escape, by Kthcl Vance (Collins). Noonday Devils, by Wyndham Martyn; Dove in Mulberry Tree, by Grorgc H. Prcedy: The Cornish Riviera Mystery, by Jolin Rowland; Stick at Nothing, by Andrew Wood; The Four Green Fish, by Kd?ar Jopson; The Guilt is Great, bv C. I. D. Smith; Arsenic and Gold, by Bertram Atkey (Herbert Jenkins). NON-FICTION. Tho 20 Years' Crisis, 1919-39, by ProTessor E. H. Carr (Macmlllan). Alfred Adler: Apostle of Freedom, by Pbyllls Boltoine (Faber atul Faber).

SANDA Mala" (Faber), by Maurice Collis, tells of a young English portrait painter who suddenly receives from the blue a commission to go to Burma to paint the portraits of a wealthy native prince and his family. When he reached Burma, Charles Mangan found himself strangely in sympathy with the place. He had already painted some imaginative portraits, and now found that they had been unmistakably Burmese in quality. But it is not with portrait-painting alono that tlio story is concerncd. Tlio prince had a daughter, a beautiful and sophisticated young person, brought up in England, and she and the painter are drawn together. The resulting situation, complicated by the presence of tlio attractive wife of a British resident, is entertainingly worked out. The plot is not a logically probable one, but the story is so well told that the reader is not unduly concerncd to weigh probabilities with exactness. This is not one of Mr. Collis* major works, but will make enjoyable holiday reading. + 4 4 + MRS. Elspeth Huxley's fondness for setting the scene of her 5 stories in Kenya is well known: it is only a few months since her charming native novel, "Red Strangers," was reviewed in this column. Her new book, "Death of an Aryan" (Methuen), is a detective story, in which the action takes place in the Cliania, which the author knows so well. ; A German settler is found dead in his drying shed, a retired British naval . ofiiccr dies in a forest fire, and a hoinij eidal maniac prowls by night in Mrs. Huxley's story, in every chapter of '' which a new sensation is added to the total < f horrors. The reader suspects ; a political significance behind it all, but I' it is left to the sagacious Vachcll (a police ofiicer, but we are not given his s Christian name, rank or status) to solve the mystery, which he does with cilicicncv. Mrs. Huxley does not omit to weave a love interest into her plot, - which may have the disadvantage of making it difficult to use Vachcll again i- a further s*'»r~.