A CROOKED MILE
By Oliver Onions, Author of 'The Two Kisses.'
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
By H. C. Bailey, Author of 'The Lonely Queen.'
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
By C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Author of 'The Adventures of Captain Kettle.'
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