Mr. Meredith Nicholson has acquired a great reputation in America by works like “The House of the Thousand Candles,” in which the threads of romance are woven into the fabric of everyday life. The present book is pure comedy. It is the story of two friends who find themselves, unknown to each other, assisting on opposite sides in a war between the two daughters of the Governors of the Carolinas.
KATHARINE FRENSHAM. Miss Beatrice Harraden.
Miss Harraden, many years ago, made her reputation by “Ships that Pass in the Night” as a delicate and subtle portrayer of human life and an accomplished artist in feminine psychology. Without any cheap emotional appeal she has an unequalled power of attracting the attention and winning the affections of her readers. “Katharine Frensham” is an admirable example of this gift, and all lovers of sincere and delicate art will welcome it.
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. H. G. Wells.
This is a good example of Mr. Wells’s scientific romance at its best. It is a story of the first landing of mortals in the moon; of the strange land they found there, the strange government, and the strange people. It is a nightmare, but one without horror. Mr. Wells’s imagination has created out of wild shapes and figments a world which has got an uncanny reality of its own. The story grips the reader in the first chapter and carries him swiftly to the end.
PROFESSOR ON THE CASE. Jacques Futrelle.
Mr. Jacques Futrelle has attained in America, by his detective stories, something of the reputation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in this country. He has created a figure as original and wonderful as Sherlock Holmes. The Professor is a devotee of pure logic, and by acting on the principle that two and two always make four, is able to elucidate the most baffling mysteries.
LOVE AND THE SOUL HUNTERS. J. O. Hobbes.
The late Mrs. Craigie had a unique place among modern writers. She combined a brilliant wit and a remarkable gift of epigram with the mysticism of the spiritual life; a union of qualities of which we find traces in Disraeli’s best novels, and “Love and the Soul Hunters” is a typical example of her gifts.