BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12609, 25 June 1904, Page 5 (Supplement)

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

JabwiCk, t«R Prodigal: By Tom Galloa. Ward, Lock and Co., Ltd., London. Received, from Messrs. Gordon and Gotch). —This is the story of an eventful week in the life of Randal Jarwick, professional criminal, and son of a master criminal, who is blind, but has always gone scot free by sacrificing others, even his own son: Randal escapes from prison and finds a murdered man under his father's table. This victim, the old wretch claims, has been killed in a card-quarrel by a young fellow who had been persuaded to the house. The old man insists on Randal impersonating a long-lost son for whom a rich neighbour is searching anxiously. The neighbour intends to marry his son to his niece, the alleged murderer's sweetheart. These complications give rise to a most perplexing and intricate series of purposes and cross-purposes, amid which Randal, won by a cousinly kiss from a good woman, steadily seeks to save the girl and to clear her lover. He succeeds, but lands back into prison, the girl believing always that " Cousin George has gone abroad." ,

In Stebl and Lkather: By R. H. Forster. John Long, 13 and 14, Norris-street, Haymarket, London.—A cheerful and readable historic romance, made the better by its simplicity and wholesomeness. There' are all the essentials of popular plot, the wicked guardian of the orphan ward, the friendly priest—the place and period is Northumberland, long before the Reformation— noble knight and his beautiful daughter, the bosom friend whose-friendship passes the love of woman, the shock of battle, dungeons, escapes, heroism, and the happy ending." Herbert Whittingbam, of Northumberland, heir to the Whittinabam estate in the turbulent times of the Roses, falls under the guardianship of a designing and tricky turncoat, who changes roses whenever conveniently In the fashion of the day, he purposes to sell young Herbert in "marriage, pocketing the price, but Herbert falls .in love with his guardian's niece, daughter of a loyal and gallant Lancastrian. At first to escape being, married, and afterwards to win the girlv he does such things for the cause of Lancaster as are only possible to youths of twenty, in love and in romance.

The Fbxtit of the Vine: By Edwin. Pugh. John Long, London.—This is a rather clever autobiographical novel,- with a teetotal moral and jw sufficiently horrid example to popularise Abstinence to anybody with " nerves." The tale is told to the ranconteur by Gideon Bolsover, a Bohemian who had gone to the dogs through drink, but managed to reform and to drag out a repentant existence. This Gideon is not in any way. a pleasant character, being a shallow and conceited fellow, only superficially clever, and without any apparent depths. He gets' fascinated by a showy woman, who lives' apart from her husband, and uses Gideon as a- poodle to walk about with, and indifferently friendly with a factory girl who is afterwards murdered by her husband. His drunkenness shatters the ability which enabled him to rise from abject poverty to comparative comfort, assisted as he was by a good mother, arid he is generally a failure. It ia all very sad, of course, but the general impression made, though not intended, is that it really doesn't make any great difference whether the Gideon Bolsovers drink themselves to death or not. They seem to be worthless at the best.

■■■" A Kiko's Desikx : By Mr. Aylmer Gouring. John Long, London.—Petty principalities survive in Europe mainly to give a tinge of realism* to the modern novel. The young King of Altenstadt, after a series of youthful experiences, fails in love with his old playmate, daughter of the English ducal house of Braneaster. '.}. Everybody is against the ;match, the English being unpopular with the Altenstadters, and the King? not too surely throned. But tie King persists, until the wicked mother of the* girl, a lawless woman who has turned Anarchist, secures a secret conference and attempts to prove that the lovers are really brother and sister. In the end, the father, who is imprisoned in the Soudan "by ' Arab slave-traders, is rescued/ and dispels the delusion. Thus the King comes to his desire. -?

?I)EtPKINB: *By Curtis Yorke. John Long, London.—Delphine is a witty and insuppressible Anglo-French girl, granddaughter of an old English squire, -who disturbs with her vivacity the peace of an English village and compels the reluctant love of a self-satisfied neighbour. . When the grandfather dies, ; she discovers that her parents were not married. She flies in shame—egged on by the schemes of a, villainess—and makes an effort to earn her living in London, typewriting. ; She is, of course, pursued by:various faithful lovers, including the self-satisfied neighbour, to whom finally her heart turns, and who rescues her from sore distress. : Delphine is a charming character and the villainess, a reputedly piofcs girl who has set her heart on f marrying the self-satisfied gentleman, is a villain indeed.

LOVE'S Proxy :; By Richard Bagot. Edward Arnold, : 37, Bedford-street, London, W.C-—This is a novel of the new school, which, as everybody knows, regards life aa only just beginning for women when they are, married, in contradistinction to the old school which married them on the last: pages and ] : thereafter left them in peace. Beautiful Katherme Savington, persuaded by her mother, who is in feeble health and /depends on an annuity, marries Sir Henry Lorrimar, a millionaire upholsterer. She makes the acquaintance of Ronald Lati- : mer, practically adopted son of the childless Duke and Duchess of Cheshire, and a rising; young politician. Whence, trouble. Latimer marries, but after marriage continues devoted to Mrs. Lorrimer, who reciprocates no more than a; marble statue. Finally, offered the governor-generalship of India, after the easy fashion only possibly in romance, he refuses in order not to leave the lady, Meanwhile,,evil tongues and anonymous writers have made trouble between her and her husband, and in society generally; but she learns to love him after an accident in which he loses his sight, puts Latimer in his place, embraces the conciliated Duchess, arid, though somewhat late in the day, " lives happily ever after." , - ■

Croppies, Lie Down: By William, Buckley. Duckworth and Co., London.— We have remarked upon the exceedingly bad taste and literary incapacity displayed by writers of South African stories, who make the Britisher all that is good and the Boer everything that is bad, seeing that the average Boer and the average Britisher are neither better nor worse than one another and we do not wish to perpetuate feud by partisan exaggerations and inartistic lack of perspective. Exactly the same criticism applies to any story dealing with civil strife nearer home. In this book, which deals with the Irish rising of 1798, the writer enthusiastically shows that every rebel was a hero and every loyalist a scoundrel, the only exception to the latter dogma being an English officer who is made a decent man in ordei that everybody else may disgust him. Those who like that sort of thing will find 500 monotonous pages of it in " Croppies, Lie Down."

Tub Black Monk : By Anton Tchekhoff. Duckworth and Co., London.Russian literature has a peculiar interest at the present time, owing to the light which it throws upon Russian life and character. Tchekhoff, though but little known in the Western world, is said to be among the most popular of writers with the Russians themselves. He is a native of that South Russia in which disturbing influences are now widespread and threatening, and his stories, of which " Tho Black Monk" is a partial collection, are pessimistic in the extreme. His heroes are all helpless genuises, who are summarily suppressed, not so much by authority, but by the dull and brutal mass that surrounds them. If this ie the clue to the character of the Russian, it shows us what mav happen if the dull and brutal mass ever becomes disposed to listen to the genius which now it stifles.