Part 37 (1/2)
By ARNOLD BENNETT, Author of 'Clayhanger.'
This is a re-issue of one of Mr. Bennett's most famous novels.
THE WAY HOME
By BASIL KING, Author of 'The Wild Olive.'
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
By DOROTHEA CONYERS, Author of 'Sandy Married,' etc.
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
By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE, Authors of 'If Youth but Knew.'
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 Maecenas 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 Maecenas' house--but ending in a happy surrender on both sides.
THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUND
By ALICE PERRIN, Author of 'The Anglo-Indians.'
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 cla.s.s of life, but marries an official of humble origin ignorant of the circ.u.mstances 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
By G. K. CHESTERTON.
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 princ.i.p.al characters in the romance.
THE WAY OF THESE WOMEN
By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM, Author of 'The Missing Delora.'
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 circ.u.mstances 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
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 courts.h.i.+p. In it two _menages_ are contrasted, the one run on new and liberal and enlightened lines, the other still dominated by the ideas of the benighted past.