NOVELS AND TALES.--A Lady Horse Breaker. By Mrs. Conney. 3
vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—Mrs. Conney has written a lively and readable story. The first volume is the best, as is often the case in these books, not so much because the writer becomes care- less, as because he or she thinks that there must be a plot, and that the greater the surprise the better this plot will be. In this tale we have a very surprising social change, to which we have no particular objection. The really irritating thing about the latter part of the story is the series of misunderstandings. If people in real life had the genius for taking wrong views of things, and the obstinacy in avoiding explanations which they display in fiction, than life would certainly not be worth living. But, in spite of any drawbacks that there may be, this is a pleasant, well- written novel.—Among short stories we may mention Innocencia, translated from the Portuguese of Sylvio Dinart by James W. Wells (Chapman and Hall), and described as "a story of the
prairie region of Brazil." The motive, of course, is love and jealousy, fiery passions as becomes the clime. The hero is a young doctor who falls in love with a fair patient—fairer, we should think, than her presentment on the frontispiece—and incurs thereby the vengeance of the man to whom she is betrothed. A comic element is supplied by the adventures of a German savant, to whom life means collecting beetles and butterflies. There is abundance of local colour and some power in the story.—Reggie
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