THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 71, 25 March 1922, Page 15

THE BOOKMAN

'•'.The Garden of Memories." By H. St. John"' Cooper. London: Sampson, Low, and Marston.

Ghosts haunt the manor house of Homewood, which is in Sussex. They seem to resent its new-rich owner who buys the place for his son. They are gentle ghosts that, visit Homewood, being those of a ypuitg gardener and his love—a lady's maid. In the flesh they married, but the bode died young. In their shadowy after-lives they were not divided, and continued to haunt the cool gardens of Homewood. Now, it fell out that Sir Josiah Hwnewood, the new owner of the estate, was a descendant of the gardener, and a pretty little village girl named Betty Hanson had descended from the gardener* wife. What move natural, then, for th« son of Sir Josiah, for whom Homewootl had been bought, than that he should marry Betty? This does happen in the .story, and so reincarnation is demonstrated to be not impossible, but the ghosts find their occupation gone. It is a pretty ami clever story with some quite original character studies, most of them exceedingly well drawn.

"The Street of a Delights." By Jay Gelzer.* London: Mills and Boon.

I '.'The Street of a Thousand Delights" is a collection /of stories, mainly concerning white, .women and Chinese, but not necessarily to the discredit of the ilatter. Scenes aro laid in Melbourne, various treaty ports of China, and Hongkong. The writer has intimate knowledge of Chinese manners and customs. Ho presents the Chinese as. no better and no worse than any other peoples. The tales are well told, and may be relied upon to hold the interest of the reader. The confusion of Cantonese with Chinese is avoided, but the main reason of this collection is to entertain' the reader, which it cwrtainly will.

"Whispers." By Louis Dodge. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. "Resurrection Rock." By Edwin Balmer. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. "Sold Out of Celebes." By Captain A. E. Dingle. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

These three novels are received from Whitcombe, and Tombs, ■ Wellington. They provide wholesome and interesting reading on a dull evening or a tedious railway journey. The first, "Whispers," is a sensational story of a murder mystery and newspaper reporters' attempts to solve it. Incidentally the novel affords a most interesting glimpse of the business of news gathering and preparation in a great American newspaper. Pheneas Drumm is the victim, and "Whispers" is the suspect. Who.he is and what he does is well told and well worth reading. But the novel is not one merely of swift action and smart detective; it is a clever psycho-analytical study, and one/that holds the reader's interest from cover to cover.

The scene of "Resurrection Rock" is laid on the shores of Lake Superior; a conutry full of romance, where French and English interests clashed and over which they fought. Here were riches that the English Government of George 111. and the "revolting colonists" of his time never suspected. Perhaps had they realised its great natural wealth in copper and iron they might have fought even more stubbornly than they actually did. In this interesting region was situated an island- in a lake, called "Resurrection Rock." Oif the island was a house, believed to be haunted. Thither goes Lieutenant Loutrelle, just returned, from active service in France. He meets in the train Ethel Carew, and he thinks that it is from her father that the mysterious messages have come that account for his going to seek the Resurrection Rock. The plot is well designed, and the interest of the reader is stimulated by some spiritualistic phenomena, some sidelights on local feuds, references to lynching^ and some religious experiences. The mystery of Resurrection Rock is finally cleared up in t( satisfactory manner arid ends—"They were married six weeks later, at the old house at St. Florentin." ,

To most people t>e Celebeg is an attractive looking group of islands on the map, somewhere between Borneo and the Philippines. It is as, lovely a tropical country as can be imagined, but the beauty of its forests and the placidity of its seas form the setting for a powerful story of adventure, love, and mystery. "Sold Out of Celebes" is a gripping s^ory, and its pages afford a way of escape from the monotony of humdrum city life and the daily round of office routine and other work generally.