OTHER NOVE1.3.—Dormant Fires. By Gertrude Atherton. (John Murray. 7s. 6d.
net.)—A story of San Francisco society in the 'sixties. With her great and accustomed skill Mrs. Atherton paints the moral and social conditions then prevailing in that wicked little city, "born in delirium and nourished on crime," which was yet the last stronghold of the aristocratic and high-principled South. The passionate love story of Madeleine Talbot, a Boston beauty, who attempts to drink herself to death to ease a broken heart, but eventually compromises by availing herself of the then unconventional " back-door ' of divorce, is well suited to such a background. It seems to spring from it so naturallysas to make even its obvious extrava- gances appear quite in keeping.—Escape. By Jeffery E. Jeffery. (Leonard Parsons. 75. 6d. net.)—" Escaping" would have been a more appropriate title for this book, since Emily, its middle-class heroine, seems to be always in the process of escaping but never to embrace true freedom. She escapes, it is true, from one imperfect state into another, but only to find that she has but changed the nature of her bondage. Possibly her unsuccess lay in the fact that what she was really trying to escape from was—life.—The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. (Hodder and Stoughton. 75. 6d. net.)—His readers have forgiven Mr. Phillips Oppenheim too many improbabilities to be very particular as to the way in which he enables a millionaire to be nearly starved in his efforts to earn his living by casual labour. This requires some contriving, as it has to happen without injury to his future financial prospects. Needless to say, the story ends happily. leaving the hero and heroine in the lap of luxury.—The House of Whispers. By William Johnston. (Jarrolds. 75. 6d. net.)—The story of certain strange occurrences in a New York flat. The solution of the mystery will strain the reader's credulity to the utmost, for a fashionable apartment-house seems to be the last place in which it would be possible to put a secret passage.
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