Oliver Onions

IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT

By C. N. and A. M. Williamson, Authors of 'The Heather Moon,' 'The Lightning Conductor,' etc.

This book tells, in the charming manner of the authors, a story of entrancing interest for travellers in Egypt and for home-dwellers too. A young English diplomatist finds himself compelled by an unusual combination of circumstances to become the temporary conductor of a party of tourists cruising on the Mediterranean and seeing Egypt. His strange new duties plunge him into the midst of adventures both comic and serious. He composes quarrels, intervenes in love affairs, baffles the agents of a secret society, conducts his charges successfully up the Nile to Khartoum, and in the end finds love and treasure both for himself and a faithful friend.

CHANCE

In this new romance, which Mr. Conrad unfolds in his fascinating and curious way, partly by monologue, partly by narrative, we find the author of Lord Jim again revealing one of those strange cases of human passion and disaster which he alone, of living writers, can present. The sea is in the book, but it is not entirely a book of the sea.

WHOM GOD HATH JOINED

This is a re-issue of one of Mr. Bennett's most famous novels.

THE WAY HOME

This is the story, minutely and understandingly told, of a sinner, his life and death. He is an ordinary man and no hero, and the final issue raised concerns the right of one who has persistently disregarded religion during his strength, in accepting its consolations when his end is near: a question of interest to every one. The book, however, is not a tract, but a very real novel.

OLD ANDY

No one knows rural Ireland and its humours better than Mrs. Conyers, whose intensely Hibernian stories are becoming so well known, and throw such amusing light on that eternal and delightful Ireland which never gets into the papers or politics. In Old Andy there is a very charming vein of sentiment as well as much fun and farce.

THE GOLDEN BARRIER

The main theme of this romance is the situation created by the marriage—a marriage of love—of a comparatively poor man, proud, chivalrous, and tender, to a wealthy heiress: a girl of refined and generous instincts, but something of a wayward 'spoilt child,' loving to use the power which her fortune gives her to play the Lady MÆcenas to a crowd of impecunious flatterers, fortune hunters, and unrecognized geniuses. On a critical occasion, thwarted in one of her mad schemes of patronage by her husband, who tries to clear her society of these sycophants and parasites, she petulantly taunts him with having been a poor man himself, who happily married money. Outraged in his love and pride, he offers her the choice of coming to share his poverty or of living on, alone, amid her luxuries. There begins a conflict of wills between these two, who remain in love with each other—prolonged naturally, and embittered, by the efforts of the interested hangers-on to keep the inconvenient husband out of Lady MÆcenas' house—but ending in a happy surrender on both sides.

THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUND

A lively and entertaining story of Anglo-Indian life dealing with the matrimonial adventures of a young lady whose forbears have all been connected with the Indian services, and who is sent out to India to find a husband in her own class of life, but marries an official of humble origin ignorant of the circumstances of his birth. Troubles and disappointments, which come near to real tragedy, end in the triumph of grit and sincerity over social barriers.

THE FLYING INN

This story is partly a farcical romance of the adventures of the last English Inn-keeper, when all Western Europe had been conquered by the Moslem Empire and its dogma of abstinence from wine. It might well be called 'What Might Have Been,' for it was sketched out before the legend of the Invincible Turk was broken. It involves a narrative development which is also something of a challenge in ethics. The lyrics called 'Songs of the Simple Life,' which appeared in The New Witness, are sung between the Inn-keeper and his friend, the Irish Captain, who are the principal characters in the romance.

THE WAY OF THESE WOMEN

In this story Mr. Phillips Oppenheim, who is never content to remain in the same rut for long, has boldly deserted the somewhat complicated mechanism which goes to the making of the modern romance. He has contented himself with weaving a tensely written story around one Event, and concentrating the whole love interest of the book upon two people. The Event in itself is one simple enough, its use in fiction almost hackneyed, yet the circumstances surrounding it are so tragical and surprising, its hidden history so unexpected, that it easily serves as the pivot of an interest arresting from the first, startling in its latter stages, almost breathless in its last development.

A CROOKED MILE

This is a story of a very modern marriage following the author's previous story, The Two Kisses, of a very modern courtship. In it two mÉnages are contrasted, the one run on new and liberal and enlightened lines, the other still dominated by the ideas of the benighted past. What the difference between them comes to in the end depends entirely on the interpretation put upon the story, but the comedy 'note' speaks for itself. It may be remembered that The Two Kisses touches on the foibles of certain artists. A Crooked Mile deals with the vagaries of a certain airy amateurism in Imperial Politics.

THE SEA CAPTAIN

One of the great company of Elizabethan seamen is the hero of this novel. There is, however, no attempt at glorifying him or his comrades. Mr. Bailey has endeavoured to mingle realism with the romance of the time. Captain Rymingtowne is presented as no crusader but something of a merchant, something of an adventurer and a little of a pirate. He has nothing to do with the familiar tales of the Spanish Main and the Indies. His voyages were to the Mediterranean when the Moorish corsairs were at the height of their power, and of them and their great leaders, Kheyr-Éd-din Barbarossa and Dragut Reis, the story has much to tell. Captain Rymingtowne was concerned in the famous Moorish raid to capture the most beautiful woman in Europe and in the amazing affair of the Christian prisoners at Alexandria.

FIREMEN HOT

In Firemen Hot, Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne has added three clearly etched portraits to a gallery which already contains those marine 'musketeers,' Thompson, McTodd, and Captain Kettle. The marine fireman is probably at about the bottom of the social scale, but, in Mr. Hyne's pages, he is very much the human being. In each chapter the redoubtable trio play before a different background, but whether they are in New Orleans or Hull, in Vera Cruz or Marseilles, one can tell in a paragraph that the author is writing of his ground from first-hand knowledge, and his characters from intimate and joyous study of them. A few Captain Kettle stories have been added.

SIMPSON

Simpson is a retired business man in the prime of life, who, beneath a rugged exterior, possesses a sympathetic heart. Yet, finding no woman to fill it, he organizes a bachelor's club of congenial spirits and leases a fine old English country estate, there to live in dolce far niente untroubled by feminism in any form. How first one member of the club and then another drops away for sentimental reasons until only Simpson is left, and then his final capitulation to the only woman—all this makes a delightful bit of comedy. The book, however, is more than a comedy. Running through it is a sound knowledge of human life and character, and the writing is always brilliant. It is a book out of the ordinary in every way.

TWO WOMEN

DAVID AND JONATHAN IN THE RIVIERA

Two simple, unsophisticated bachelors, respectively minister and elder of a Scotch country parish, go to the Riviera for health's sake, and the rich and jovial 'Jonathan,' older by fifteen years than his friend, means to have a merry time, and to force the reluctant, shy, and sensitive 'David' into having a merry time too. He 'opines' that David needs waking up. Jonathan Buckie reminds us of Mrs. Walford's earlier hero 'Mr. Smith,' but unluckily his heart of gold is not united to the latter's personal charms, and he continually jars upon his companion, especially when making new acquaintances. His habit of doing this in and out of season eventually leads to disaster, and both men pass through a never-to-be-forgotten experience of the sirens of the South before they return home. An old Scotch serving-man, who attends Mr. Buckie as valet, plays no small part in the story, and his sardonic comments, grim humour, and the way in which he handles his master, whose measure he has taken to a nicety, make many amusing episodes.

THE ORLEY TRADITION

The Orleys are an old noble family, once powerful, but now living quietly in a corner of England (Kent). They do nothing at all, in spite of people's endeavours to make them reach to the older heights. But they are happy in their retirement, and the real reason for this is that they have few brains. John Orley, the hero, has all the family characteristics, and is preparing himself for a humdrum country life, when he meets with an accident which prevents him from playing games, etc. He becomes ambitious, goes out into the world, and—fails at everything. He recovers his strength, and sees the mistake he has made, and the book ends as it began, the Orley Tradition holding true.

ON THE STAIRCASE

The scene of Mr. Frank Swinnerton's new novel is set in the heart of London, in the parish of Holborn. The reproduction of manners, and the revelation by this means of the spirit underlying those manners, forms the framework of a story of passion. In the main, therefore, On the Staircase is a romance with a clearly defined setting of commonplace happenings, in which the loves of Barbara Gretton and Adrian Velancourt are shown in conflict with the action of circumstance. The book is in no sense photographic, but it has value as a social picture, being based upon genuine observation.

MAN AND WOMAN

This story, which is based on Tennyson's lines—'The woman's cause is man's, they rise or sink together'—has for its chief character a woman who takes the feminist view that man is the enemy; a view from which she is ultimately converted. Another prominent character is one whose love is given to a weak man, her axiom being that love takes no heed of the worthiness or unworthiness of its object. The scene is laid partly in London, partly in a country cottage, and partly in India during the Durbar of the King-Emperor.

MAX CARRADOS

Max Carrados is blind, but in his case blindness is more than counter-balanced by an enormously enhanced perception of the other senses. How these serve their purpose in the various difficulties and emergencies that confront the wealthy amateur when, through the instigation of his friend Louis Carlyle, a private inquiry agent, he devotes himself to the elucidation of mysteries, is the basis of Mr. Ernest Bramah's new book. The adventures that ensue range from sensational tragedy to romantic comedy as the occasions rise.

THE MAN UPSTAIRS

Under this title Mr. Wodehouse has collected nineteen of the short stories written by him in the past four years. Mr. Wodehouse is one of the few English short-story writers with an equally large public on both sides of the Atlantic: but only two of these stories have an American setting. All except one of this collection are humorous, and some idea of the variety of incident of the remainder may be gathered from the fact that their heroes include a barber, a gardener, an artist, a playwriter, a tramp, a waiter, an hotel clerk, a golfer, a stockbroker, a butler, a bank clerk, an assistant master at a private school, an insurance clerk, a peer's son who is also a leading member of a First League Association football team, and a Knight of King Arthur's Round Table who is neither brave nor handsome.

SQUARE PEGS

This novel raises again the absorbing question as to what is failure and what success. It tells how a big man from South Africa sets out to conquer London—the London of the Lobby and the Clubs—with a threepenny weekly paper and sympathy for the unemployed; how he fails, but in failure wins his woman; how she too suffers in the London of women workers. There is, on the other side, the little solicitor who calculates for and succeeds by the other's failure; but in succeeding loses. The background includes the life drama of an enthusiast for Labour reform.

MESSENGERS

A story of the sudden yielding to temptation of a woman of good position. She suffers for her fault in prison, but her sufferings on release are ten times greater. She tries her utmost to keep the knowledge of her guilt from her daughter, a girl just left school, but in vain. The girl, in a painful scene, demands to be told the truth, and the mother, unable to bear the sight of her child's misery, flies from home, hoping still in some way to retrieve the past. But the net of circumstance is too strongly woven.

ENTER AN AMERICAN

The hero of Miss Crosby-Heath's new novel is a self-made American, who comes to London and enters a Home for Paying Guests. He is an optimistic philanthropist, and he contrives to help all the English friends he makes. His own crudity is modified by his London experiences, and the dull minds of his middle-class English friends are broadened by contact with his untrammelled personality. A humorous love interest runs through the book.

THE FRUITS OF THE MORROW

The Fruits of the Morrow is a novel showing the consequences of a man's and a woman's conduct in the past and how it affects the lives of their two sons. The other characters of the story are in different degrees involved in the results of the old romance, but not irredeemably. There is no hero in the ordinary sense of the word, the four male characters being of almost equal importance. The action takes place mainly in East Anglia and during the months of one summer.

A GIRL FROM MEXICO

Adventures are to the adventurous, and a very young Oxford man who strikes out for himself in the wild and woolly West is apt to come in for some lively developments. He gets an exciting start by going partners with a Mormon-eating American desperado, and when the unsophisticated youth falls in love with a velvet-eyed Mexican senorita, and then finds himself called upon in honour to play the part of Don Quixote, things begin to get tangled up. Finally he becomes involved in a struggle, not only with Mormons but with Mexican self-torturers in a great scene on the Calvary of the Penitentes which forms the climax of the story.

SARAH MIDGET

In the sedate atmosphere of a quiet country town there develop the later phases of a man's sin, when he has become rich and powerful, and the woman whom he thrust aside in his early manhood learns, all unconsciously, to love the son of her successful rival. How Sarah Midget rises, in the shock of a great tragedy, to supreme heights of self-sacrifice, is shown in poignant and moving scenes.

AN ASTOUNDING GOLF MATCH

The narrative of the adventures of two golfers of equal handicaps, but different styles, who being dissatisfied with the result of two home and home matches, decide that golf across country from links to links, would be more scientific and interesting than golf where all the hazards are known. The troubles that befell them, and how the match came to an abrupt termination, to the discomfort of one and the joy of the other, are told in this book.

BLACKLAW

This is a study in temperaments—a contrast between the old and the new views of the relations between parent and child. Lord Blacklaw throws up rank and fortune, takes his children to the Colonies to live 'the Patriarchal Life,' and sacrifices their future to his own impulses. John Westray, on the other hand, gives up happiness, even life itself, for what he deems his son's welfare. Each from his own point of view fails, yet neither life is wholly wasted. The scenes are laid in Scotland, New Zealand, and in a Cornish Art Colony.

POTTER AND CLAY

In this story the author returns to the peasant folk of the Midlands whom she knows so well, and of whom she has written with sympathetic frankness in several books already. Just now, when the land question is so much discussed, this novel, dealing in the main with tillers of the soil, should receive careful attention.

A ROMAN PICTURE

Mr. Paul Waineman, the Finnish novelist who has so far allowed his pen only to describe his native land Finland, has in his latest work essayed a new and also very old hunting ground for those in search of romance. A Roman Picture is a romantic love story, set in the Mother City of the world, Rome. The author, from personal experience, shows up in a daring manner the hatred that still exists between the old and the new Rome. The heavy shadows and many memories within the vast decaying Roman palace, haunted by the living presence of the young and beautiful Donna Bianca Savelli, the last representative of an ancient line, form a pen-picture which will appeal to the many lovers of Rome.

THE GIRL ON THE GREEN

The atmosphere of the links pervades Mark Allerton's new novel. The wind from the sea blows fresh through its pages. The heroine is a charming, high-spirited girl who on her way from college to Bury St. Dunstan's, has an unexpected excursion into Militancy. The author has no views to present on the Suffrage Movement; nor, indeed, has his heroine, whose not-to-be-explained week-end in a police cell gives ample scope for a highly amusing and exciting story. While The Girl on the Green makes a bid for general popularity, golfers will find it of particular interest. Mark Allerton is well known as a writer on the game, and his description of the great golf match between the hero and heroine will be found full of sly allusions to topics in the knowledge of all golfers, as well as an uncommonly racy and exciting finish to a breezy story.

DICKIE DEVON

Mr. John Overton's second novel is laid in Worcestershire in the summer of 1644, and is the story of a young Cavalier, forced by adverse circumstances to become a spy among the Roundheads. His position is a difficult and dangerous one, and matters are made worse by the advent of a spoilt Court beauty, who—mistaking him for another man—imagines herself to be his wife. Readers of Lynette will welcome the reappearance of the happy-go-lucky Irishman, Michael Fleming, who plays a leading part in this romance of love and war.

THE STORY OF A CIRCLE

A story of an experiment in the Occult, in which some ladies who began by being idly interested in psychical research, find themselves in dangerous contact with the material necessities of mediums. Much light is cast upon that strange population of charlatans who grow fat on the credulity of the foolish in London.

LOTTERIES OF CIRCUMSTANCE

This story is laid in Germany, and describes the matrimonial adventures of two sisters belonging to the impoverished German aristocracy. The elder, gentle and unselfish, marries into the vulgar domineering family of Gubbenmeyer. The other, flirtatious and attractive, saves herself and her family from penury by securing a rich officer, only to jeopardize everything through her undisciplined and sensuous temperament.