NEW BOOKS.

Evening Post, Volume LIV, Issue 141, 11 December 1897, Page 2

NEW BOOKS.

Teens : By Louise Mack. Angus and Robertson, Sydney; R. Holliday &, Co., Wellington. Louise Maok is already a fairly well-known name among Australian writers, and her stories possess power and imagination. It is not, however, much imagination that has framed this tale we have just read, but memory — the memories of a not-too-far-baok girlhood. The dedication to " Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes, Black Eyes, and Grey Eyes, by the sister who led you into so many scrapes," shows plainly for whom Miss Mack is writing, and to the vast and critical assemblage of schoolgirls this book will bring great pleasure. According to one writer a girl has stated it is the very volume to " bring to bed," just as we used to do Miss Alcott's exquisite and humorous pictures of girl and boy life. Miss Mack's " Teens " is not so amusing nor so pathetic as " Little Women," but for all that it is written with a wonderful comprehension of and sympathy with her characters, and we should imagine it would be a, very popular book among girls. The lonely Mabel is a charmingly natural little personage. Indeed, almost any woman who reads this tale will find among its characters her own familiar friends and foes of the pinafore days ot long ago. We should imagine from the ending that the authoress proposes writing more about Lennie and Mabel. We shall hope so. Australian Faiey Tales: By Atha Westbury.* This is a most attractively got up book, its emblematic cover and illustrations being both well executed. The fairy tales, however, are more suited to elder readers than to children, and as a rule the former have little time or inclination for such literature. There is perhaps overmuch moralising and sentiment, and too little vivid action and simple childish words to make these fairy tales attain auything like the popularity of the time-worn favourites of our nursery days. May their shadow never grow less ! But to the older child, who has not outgrown his taste for the marvellous — and some colonial children never seem, alas ! to have possessed it at all— this book is interesting and full of local colour. " Nellie " and " Twilight " are perhaps the best of the twenty-nine fairy tales, but there is a delicate fantasy in " Baby's Visitors " that reminds us of the great Hans Andersen. Thb Last Stroke, A Deteotive Story : By Lawrence Lynch.* Mr. Lynch, the well-known author of "No Proof" and "Moina," has given us another good detective stotv. aud though this style of literature is noi the highest, it has a large aud critical publio. There is sustained interest in this book, and from the murder at the beginning to the weddingbells at the end the story is brightly and vividly told. Especially well drawn is the character of Ferrars, the detective, who is beloved by the desperate murderess. The book is a readable one. Pharisees : by A. Kevill-Davies.* For some time past we have been suffering from an epidemic of plain heroines, possessed of ugly features and beautiful and attractive minds. Miss Broughton first introduced the plain heroine to the British public, aud she took immensely, quite putting out of joint her pretty sister's Grecian nose. But now there has come a revulsion, and the leading lady cannot be too lovely. Nina Harwood's beauty in the book we have just read is impressed on us in every chapter. She is tall, shapely, aristocratic, with heaps of glittering auburn hair, large, limpid blue eyes, and an exquisitely curved mouth. Her hair is always glittering, whether in the gilded balls of the London aristocracy or the New York Police Station. Her extraordinary adventures in search of a livelihood — after she is left destitute by her father — are not uninteresting. She subsequently meets with a millionaire. She is selling papers when he catches the glitter of her hair and the gleam of her limpid blue eye, and after a blissful interlude of theatre, opera, and suppers at Delmonico's, they are married. But he has another wife, from whom he has tried in vain to be divorced. And, by the way, there are many extraordinary reflections on American divorce laws contained in this book. The hero— for so we must consider Mr. Paul Timms, though a more weak-kneed specimen of the genus it would be difficult to finddescribes the decision of the Court against him as " the verdict of a dozen muttonheads off the great American fool pastures," and alludes jocularly to "a professional marriagessmasher." When the heroine finds out the existence of a former wife, she flies from the yacht where the millionaire and she are, and eventually, after more vicissitudes, finds herself wealthy, and goes to England and takes possession of her splendid property. There, after refusing a lord, she accepts the contrite millionaire, who, with his heart in one band and documentary evidence of his wife's death in the other, comes across the sea to re-woo and re-wed the rich English beauty. It seems a culmination full of bathos. Beacon Fibes : By Headon Hill.* These war stories of the coast are most interesting, vivid in lauguage and quick in action. They would form a very suitable sequel to Conan Doyle's " Uncle Bernac" — indeed, there is something in " Beacon Fires " that reminds the reader of some of that well-known authors work. The picturesque and exciting time in which these stories are laid and the simply graphic manner in which they are recounted make those who have not as yet read anything else of Headon Hill's turn eagerly to a catalogue to find what other books he has written. Of all the stories, perhaps " Smuggler Kern's Last Run " and " Sealed Orders " are the best, the tragic denouement of the last tale being skilfully worked out. By boys particularly this book would be appreciated. "This Dorrington Died -Box:" by Arthur Morrison.* The appearance of another book from Arthur Morrison's pen reminds us how aptly this writer illustrates' the career of a latter-day opportunist. His first writings were a series of frivolous papers written round the pen-drawings of animal-caricaturist Shepherd, and published in the Strand Magazine. Morrison's opportunity came when Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes. The latter individual had become a national personage, and great was the grief at his withdrawal from literature. Morrison straightway created " Martin Hewitt, Investigator," who caught on so well that his "Chronicles" and "Adventures" ran into three bulky volumes. Then Morrison really astonished novel readers with a volume of legitimate literature, "Tales of Mean Street," followed shortly afterwards by the equally clever " Child of the Jago." However, the magazines wanted more crin.inological tales— and " The Dorrington DeedBox " series resulted. Mr. Jamc-. Rigby, whose narrative formj ' u he first of the half - dozen ito. ies in the book, is an Australian with a mystery, and during a voyage Hume he falls in with Mr. Horace Dorrington, ut Dorrington & Hicks, private enquiry agents, who work the business for all it is worth, honest wise— and at times otherwise. The exciting initial story Mr. Rigby gets at first hand, the data for the other five he found in the deed-box of the firm which he largely helped to burst up. To quote the narrator: — "The business of Dorrington & Hicks had really been that of private enquiry agents, and they had done much bonaf.de business, but many of their operations had been of a more than question-

•Ward, Look & Co., London, New York, and Melbourne i H. Baillie & Co., Wellington.

able sort. And among their papers were found dockets containing in skeleton a complete history of a case." The subjects dealt with are varied enough— a stolen racehorse, a diamond theft, "the affair of the Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Company," a. strange murder, and in " Old Caters Money" is recounted the rise of Dorrington. The stories'are of the magazine kind, werving to pass an easy hour, aud are well illustrated by the pencils of Stanley L. Wood and Sydney Cowell.