NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14975, 23 May 1914, Page 9

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A BATCH OF NOVELS. Miss Ivy Low is a disappointing writer. In "The Questing Beast," sho begins a story that promises excellent things. The life of girl clerks working in a preat insurance office is with strangely telling effect. Rachel' Cohen and Janet Young are as credible and interesting in their most human faults and virtues as any young linen-draper drawn for us by Mr Wells. Then, half-way through this good book, the story becomes lost in a tangle of unpleasant love-affairs, treated with a realism that quito fails to be convincing, while it is often gross. How the author still contrives to imagine her heroin© an agreeable and rather fine character, in spite of sordid episodes, is a puzzle to tho everyday mind. (London: BelFs Indian and Colonial Library. Christchurch: Whitcombo and Tombs. 2s 6d.)

"Full Swing." by Frank Danby, gives a decidedly interesting study of a woman's life, from childhood to old age. Agatha. Wanstead was barely ten years old when the thought ot the orchids in- her father's hot-house, steaming and stifling all night, and in the hot air. made her rise from-bed and open their doors —with the unlucky consequence that the orchids died instead of responding to fresh-air treatment. She was well over sixty when she expired, discovering in her last moments that the poison which she had kindly administered to end a baby's pain, had acted as a healing medicine, and brought sleep instead of death. "Another blunder. . . the last. - -** she spoke, as her own epitaph. In tho meantime, the relations of Agatha to an idolised sister, a scamp of a husband, and a misunderstood *on, are cleverly treated. "Full Swing" is. quite tfie most artistic work

Frank Danby has produced. (London: Cassell and Company, Ltd. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. Cloth, 3s 6d.)

"On the Staircase," by Frank Svyinnerton, ; has an attractive heroine. Otherwise it is the story oP common placepeople told by a writer too afraid of being commonplace. As tho heroine is too sumptuous for her surroundings, so the Icsrfer characters move and talk with an importance never justified by any circumstances detailed. It- is really good literary work: yet t-oTiie-how not a goot"; novel. (1/ondon: Methuen's Colonial Library, 2s Gd.)

Ho lunches in a restaurant where also lunches a young woman "dressed -with extreme simplicity in sombreblack;" a young woman with pale cheeks, hut with brown eyw--, large and soft. She observes, with those eyes, a young man brave and strong, and fit for more active purposes than the lite of the idle rich. So begins "Tho Amazing Partnership, , ' in which E. •Phillips Onpenheim" shows how Miss Grace Burton, while she lunches harmlessly at restaurants, or sits in her office apparently doing innocent typewriting, is really a detective of "the deepest dye. She needs a partuor. because, some eases require brute strength, as she explains. "I have the gift of sometimes seeing into Mte JiA-irt of a mystery, but T canndt always acr, because T am a woman, and there hn* been no man whom 1 trust." As her fluffy hair is brushed severely back, ■while, her pretty fort are hidden in too thick shoes, and there is not a bow or a ribbon about her, she imagines that the partnership can he kept <to rjuite businesslike t»>rnis. Together, they -work successfulv through a series of adventures.—so "successfully that 'The Amazing Partnership" leads not only to a happy marriage in the end, but to a post in high diplomacy, with emoluments including ''a house and servants, and throe thousand a year." The adventure;; are quite interesting, nlthoufli in no osi.so pnrticularly thrilling (London: C'assell and Company. Ltd. CbristehurcJi: Whifcoonibe and Tombs, Ltd. 3s 6d.)