SOME RECENT NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1933, Page 22

SOME RECENT NOVELS

LIGHT HOLIDAY READING

' ■ "Taft'rail's" real, name is Captain Henry Taprell Dorling, D.5.0., K.N. (retired), and he is at; present on the way to New Zealand for a visit to these shores, expectingto arrive in Auckland just before Christmas. His latest story, "The Man from Scapa Flow" (Hodder and Stoughton) has, however, got hero first. The sea is not deserted for his main theme, but an entirely new subject, the scuttling^ of the German fleet in'Scapa Flow has been chosen. ' Many of these vessels were afterwards raised by methods unique in salvage work, to be towed away and converted . into scrap metal. It is upon tho re- ; eovery of one of these ships from the sea bottom that." Taffrail" has based his story of two retired naval officers, tho one a newspaper correspondent, and '. the other a salvage expert. Another . character is Hermann Bauer, an exoflicer of the.old Imperial German Navy. ( What was it that was contained in a . safe in the sunken, hull of the Prinz- ' regent Rudolf that Bauer was so i anxious to obtain1? How did John Stafford and Hugh ■ Chenies manage to circumvent him after that wild chase [ from tho Orkneys to London? The ; reading of "The Man from Scapa ' Flow" wll supply the answers and afford an hour ;or two of intense excitement. ' "Tomorrow's Giants," by Bridget Lowry (Hodder and Stoughton), is about a woman, separated from her hus- . band, who returns to him after his arrest, haunted by the thought that sho . may have failed him as much as ho had failed her. After I his imprisonment she found growing with/in her, in plaeo of the old "resentment against him, 'a feeling of pity and loyalty, and a passionate desire to build up again, somehow, tho love they had lost. In a mood of despair,-sho goes to- live in a small Suffolk village. There she meets all kinds of people, and, by chance and quite unintentionally, sets little wheels in. motion with, entirely unexpected results. Margaret Lloyd has married Johu Mandors, has died, and' has become lovelier in tradition. "The Lovely Lloyds," by Sylvia Murray (Collins), is the story of her son, Dennis, descendant on his father's side of the Cromwellian, yet with his heart in the country and the land, his look.of a farmer and his farmer's speech. Tho book opens with his quarrel with his father, and tells of his running away from ' home one early summc; morning to ; work on a farm, and of the summer 'j i lease in which he met and loved Bridget Connolly. And then there is Bridget's '■ .'brief year at Lcnnonstown where, when ; 'she slips away, she leaves nothing ex- .' ccpt the .baby daughter born of her : loneliness as well as of her love. Th<? J story goes on with Dennis's Kfe, tejl- r ing of his love for Lennonstown and of his daughter Brigid's love for it, which has some deeper passion beyond her own comprehension, from her mother's farming people. "There are times when a man has no ; right to risk his life," said the hero in j "Pitiless Choice," a new novel by ] Margaret Pcdler (Hodder and Stough- ( ton). It is on those words that tho ] author has woven a skilfully told tale, j .. Those who want an historical novel, i full ofv detail and romance, are r,ecom- ( mended "A Rose for. Scotand" by ± Alfred -Tresidder Sheppard and Roderick ] MacLeod (Hodder and Stoughton). This s story is concerned With a single-epi- r •sode in history, covering only a few g weeks 'in time —Margaret Tudor's t journey-to ; Scotland to marry King James —but it is a clever, detailed, and 1 colourful piece of historical reconstruct f tion. Much meticulous research has ( obviously gone to the making of this \ book, so .that the characters are faith- f ful.portraits, and the pictures of life in t Tudor England in castle, town, an/1 ,vil- x lage- as the Princess's train passes t through are excellently done. But the J authors are • fully alive to the high c romance of the story of James and ]i Margaret, and it is this romance whielj j is the. governing factor. Not only those Vho-like historical novels \vill $ enjoy this book, but. a,ll those Veholiko r a good happy romance will be tempted <] to read this tale of Kings and Queens z .as lovers. ■;'<• '.-....' 1 Three cheap novels—costing only t half-a-crown in England—have been re- t ceived. from Lovat Diekson. These are t "The Story of Christine," a romance by Susan Gillespie; "William Looks \ Oil," als» a romance, by P. D. Logan; j and "The Coral Beef," an adventure j story by Jean Martet. Each makes good light reading for the holiday period. '