LOVE AND THE IRONMONGER: A Novel. By F. J. Randall. Crown 8vo, 6s.
⁂ A humorous story, chiefly concerning the bequests of a benevolent, self-made merchant, who endeavours to reform some of his intemperate and untruthful employés. Peculiar knowledge of these legacies falls in the way of a junior clerk, who blackmails the legatees and uses his power as a lever for his own advancement. In doing so he creates many absurd situations, and is able to exercise extensively his natural humour. Love and a wealthy young lady intervene, together with a reversion of the legacies, so that the blackmailed turn on the blackmailer and pay him back in his own coin.
THE MASTER KNOT: A Novel. By Alice Birkhead. Crown 8vo, 6s.
⁂ This is a story of two women who differ widely in character and fortune, but whose fates are intertwined. Each struggles to untie the knot of destiny—to find that human hands are powerless to unloose it, and that it binds together the fluttering strands of the life, before held free, till security brings happiness even as youth passes and desires become less strong.
ABSOLUTION: A Novel. By Clara Viebig. Crown 8vo, 6s.
⁂ On the publication of this remarkable book in Germany last Autumn, a lengthy review appeared in the "Westminster Gazette," from which the following passages are selected:—"In Germany this book of the sombre purple cover and the design of a halo surrounding the strange title is everywhere. It is on train and steamer, in little odd bookshops of sleepy country towns, and (often in strange company) among the best-displayed wares in the shop-windows of the main streets of great cities. 'It is a terrible book,' people say as they sit poring over its pages, but we doubt whether any one, having taken it up, lays it aside as too 'terrible' before he has reached the abrupt, dramatic end…. The face of a woman, young and proud, and very beautiful, haunts the pages of the new novel by the most powerful of the woman writers of Germany."
THE ISLE OF MAIDS: A Novel. By M. T. Hainsselin. Crown 8vo, 6s.
⁂ A story dealing with the adventures of two young men fresh from Oxford, who decide, by way of a holiday, to find an uninhabited island and live for a time away from civilisation. They select one of the Ægean group in the Mediterranean. Many brisk adventures and stirring scenes follow, interspersed with love-making. The treatment is uncommon, and has the advantage of not belonging to the usual hackneyed category of stories, while the handling of grotesque situations brought about by the impulsiveness of the hero is humorous and entertaining.
By MRS. JOHN LANE
THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD