BOOKS TO READ.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 86, 27 March 1926, Page 10

BOOKS TO READ.

♦ ♦ ♦ * "GAS—DRIVE IN." , , A High-powared Romanca-Co'redy. (By J. E. Rath). Vivian Norwood loves her automobile. It’s a racing car and the body has been made to her order. And yet when, the car is stolen in the first chapter of this amazing romancecomedy, it isn’t the car that she mourns so much, it’s the loss of a letter marked “personal and confidential” that she had left in a secret pocket. Vivian discovers some information that puts her on the trail of the thieves. Xnd then because it seems the only way, she buys and begins to operate a garage out in Gaililee in the vicinity where the i*epainted racing car is being run by its mysterious possessor. For days she is tantalised by seeing it flirt past in a swirl of dust. Regaining that letter becomes the most important thing in Vivian’s fife.. She meets Richard Huiiter. the car’s present master. And she discovers to her | horror that she has lost the key to the Secret compartment. Where is it? E. J. Rath never wrote a faster moving, more rollicking comedy than “Gas—Drive in.” Y’ou will like Chariey 3 the boy wonder, and Myrtle, who has too’many feminine instincts; you may even get a sneaking pleasure from E. J. Randall, the barefaced scroundrel. You will falLjn love with Vivian Norwood or liuih Richard Hunter. And in every chapter you will find suspense and action, laughs and thrills, and the sort of entertainment that makes this seem a pretty good old world after all.—Publisher. G. H. Watt. Price, 6s. ♦ ♦ ★ ♦ “THE STORY OF OLD WAIROA AND THE EAST COAST, N.Z.” A RECORD OF OVER SIXTY YEARS OB 1 PROGRESS. (By Thomas Lambert, formerly Editor “Wairoa Guardian.” Fifty years ago, or nearly so, namely, in October 1876, a young man of 21 years of age, and with only the proverbial “tannery” in his pocket, stepped ashore at Napier. Hawke’s Bay, from the old steamer “Rangatira,” having transhipped at Wellington from the barque “Inverness,” a vessel of only 900 tons burden. He was marshalled, with others, at the old immigration barracks on the Hospital Hill, and went up country to work ,on the Hon. J. D. Ormond’s Wallingford Station at £1 per week and found-far more, he thought than, he deserved, all station work being new to him. Leaving there at Christmas he arrived in Wairoa on January Ist., 1876, and since then he has been more or less identified with the growth of Wairoa. Such was the story ho often told th.? writer of this review, x together with the fact that journalism early appealed, to him, .seeing that from 1873 to 1875 he was Doublin Hospital Correspondent for the Medical Press, published in London. The Author .after carrying on the business of a Chemist for a short time took service in a very humble capacity on the “Wairoa Free Press,” first published in 1877 ,and continued thereon till it ceased to exist, the papei having go fie down, in common with others, for publishing a political libel arising out of the Maori War. But Phoenixlike, the “Guardian” arose from the ashes, and the author (with a few years out of harness) has been more or less connected, with journalism ever since, having been Editor of the “Guardian” from 1910 tp 1921. Now, in the closing years of his life he has brought out the work we are proposing to review. It was in 1908 that he set about collecting material for a 24-pagc booklet illustrating the progress of the borough town ,and soon he found there was a vast amount of material lying about waiting, to be gathered up and put into order. The idea of a booklet was abandoned, and the project expanded into a work entitled as above. The book, which is now to hand from the publishers, is a volume of 800 pages, giving a very comprehensive history of the East Coast district. Its author has done a great service for posterity. Too little has been written and printed of the early days of tho white man in New Zealand, and the younger generation is left in ignorance concerning the work of the pioneei settlers as the result of whose hard struggles and self-sacrifices they inherit and enjoy so rich a country-and such happy conditions to-day. As tho author states in his preface: “Every year that is allowed to go past renders it increasingly difficult to present the whole facts as they should be presented. ... To supply, then a

pressing need, and to perpetuate, even in some slight degree, at least the worthiest deeds of the earliest settlers, and leave to the rising generation—both Pakeha and Maori—a printed record of past days, I have penned the pages which fill the book.” To those of the <| ( l European settlors who have not yet “passed over the border from Time to Eternity,” to their sons and grandsons who desire to delve into the past and know a liftlo mor© about the country and the contemporaries of their forbears, and to the comparative new-comer who on landing found the tracks blazed and the paths made easier, wo commend this book written by one who, having lived through the pioneer days, now has spent his closing years in compiling the history which is infused with the atmosphere he breathed in early life. The foliowin gis an extract from tho “Foreword,” written by Mr. lleiiry Hill, of Napier:—“l have read with much interest ‘The Story of Old Wairoa and the East Coast. N.Z.’ during the early days of settlement, and of Hauhauism, which Mr. T. Lambert has prepared fur publication. It is full of very valuable and historical matter ,and no* one of my acquaintance is better fitted to tell the story of tho doings of the early settlers, and of their dangers, trials, and experiences. The places described have all been visited bv me in the years gone by. and I think that the setting down of tho events as recorded deserves the most sympathetic help of every settler who has made good in the districts covered by the recital.”—Coulls. Somerville Wilkie Ltd., printers and publishers. Price, 25/- net. The book is now available at local booksellers. “SEA PLUNDER.” (By Patrick Casey.”) A sea story. An exciting yarn cf the struggle between civilised impulse and primitive passion brought into clo. e grp on beard a battered whaling sh’p on the broad Pacific. Neil Sherwood, a young reporter, is shanghaied in Honolulu at the instance of ,a war profiteer who fears the revelations of Sher wood’s investigatins. :r he profiteer himself is also shanghaied at the same time on board the whaler Ballcnas. B’urther complications arise in the shape oi a very attractive girl rescued at sea m au open boat. Add to this the discovery of a wealth of priceless ambergris in a captured whale and some idea is given of tho excitement and interest of this stirring story of the deep. Brentano’s, Ltd., publishers, London. Price 6/-.