The world has already been introduced to the famous female detective Judith Lee in the pages of the Strand Magazine, where her popularity was very great. The child of parents who were teachers of the oral system to the deaf and dumb, as soon almost as she learnt to speak she learnt to read what people were saying by watching their lips. Devoting her whole life to the improvement of a very singular natural aptitude, and employing it in the discovery and frustration of crime, she has become, as we find in this book, a constant source of wonder and delight, and a very encyclopædia of adventure.
THE OAKUM PICKERS
By L. S. Gibson, Author of 'The Heart of Desire.'
Crown 8vo, 6s. [July
A story treating of modern social life, and incidentally of the hardships inflicted by certain phases of the Divorce Laws upon the innocent partner in an unhappy marriage. The two very dissimilar women are well delineated and contrasted. Cynthia and Elizabeth, each in her own way, are so human and sympathetic that the reader can hardly fail to endorse the quotation on the title-page, 'I do not blame such women, but for love they pick much oakum.' The men are drawn with no less strength and sincerity; while Lady Juliet—the brilliant, heartless, little mondaine who precipitates the tragedy of three lives—is a thumb-nail sketch of a fascinating, if worthless, type.
HAUNTING SHADOWS; or, The House of Terror
By M. F. Hutchinson.
Crown 8vo, 6s. [August
An English girl, brought up under harsh surroundings, considers that opportunity suddenly opens the doors of Life. But these doors swing back to the accompaniment of sinister and terrible things. The very threshold of the new life is a place of terror. A harsh and inexorable fate forces her reluctant feet along a difficult way, where it seems as if none of the joys of existence can lighten the darkness. The story shows with what results to herself and others Elaine Westcourt became an inmate of the 'House of Terror.'
A WILDERNESS WOOING
By W. Victor Cook, Author of 'Anton of the Alps.'
Crown 8vo, 6s. [August
A thrilling story of the early French-Canadian pioneers, and the romantic adventures of a young heir to an English earldom. The novel, which is full of excitement and dramatic incident, presents a series of vivid pictures of the days when the great pathfinder La Salle was carrying the lilies of France at utmost hazard into the Western wilds. The love interest is strong, and attractively handled, and even such strange-seeming affairs as the 'Ship of Women' and the marriage market at Quebec have their historical sanction.