GIFT - BOOKS.
MORE STORIES FOR GIRLS.
THIC last few weeks have produced many books for, girls, from among which we can recommend several. For quite young girls A Troublesome Trio, by Annie Beatley (S.S.U., 2s.), tells pleasantly of the incursion of three Australian stepsisters upon the heroine, a village schoolmistress in a country parish.— Plain Deb, by L. M. Parker (S.P.C.K., 2s.), is an old-fashioned story, rather piously and artlessly told, of two Canadian girls thrust into the home of unpleasant relatives in England. They grow up till they find excellent husbands.—More exciting is The Mystery of Castle Veer, by E. E. Cowper (same publishers, 28.), which might please boys too. It recounts the life of a delightful family in a half-ruined castle on the coast at the out- break of war. There is some adventure on the sea and a spice of spying.—What Happened to Kitty, by Theodora Wilson (Blackie and Son, 2e. ed.), is a wholesome open-air story of children in Westmorland. One of them lives with a morose uncle, whose conversion to humanity is long delayed, for he has the best of wills.—With Margery Dame (same publishers, 6s.) we are safe in the hands of " Katharine Tynan," who tells a sentimental tale of a " little mother " of a family bullied by a vrretched stepmother. Good angels and knights-errant turn up most satisfactorily.—From the school-stories we select The Jolliest Term on Record, by Angela Brazil (same publishers, 3s. ed.), which has some attractive girls and an outside interest in the usual missing will.—In Molly Angers Adventures (same publishers, 2s. ed.) Miss Bessie Merchant takes us to Belgium at the outbreak of war, when three capital English children find their way alone to Courtrai, where they are stranded. In spite of one extravagant coincidence, this is a good story, for it avoids unpleasant horrors, and the painful ignorance of what is going on around them is well and probably truly described.—The same writer gives us one of her exciting tales of adventure in Joyce Harrington's Ilrust (same publishers, es.). The scene is laid in the Argentine. There is detective work and the management of peons, mules and devastating ants, as well as her family, to develop the qualities of the delightful heroine.
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