New Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

HIDDEN LIVES--Leonora Eyles-- Boni ($2.50). Francis Reay, English curate, was one of those unhappily fanatical self-flagellants of religion obsessed with putting away the sins of the flesh. Helen Clevion, doctor, sane and modern, had no sympathy for his bigotry but fell in love with him, nevertheless. The tragic working-out of their story crazed Francis and ruined Helen's career and her chance for any normal happiness, but she would not let it break her completely, for she was made of enduring stuff. An unpleasant, bitter, well executed novel that centers about the clash between ancient and modern concepts of real morality.

CROATAN -- Mary Johnston -- Little Brown ($2.00). The adventure of Raleigh's lost colony in Virginia--the settlers who disappeared, leaving only the name "Croatan" cut in a tree, and were never found again by their English kin. The novel offers a fictional solution of their disappearance and traces the romance of Virginia Dare, the first white child born in the colony. As a tale, it is swift, exciting, skillful-- in the best vein of that historical fiction which ranks below the finest. As history, it offers at least an ingenious hypothesis in answer to one of the strangest riddles in the story of the U. S.

31 STORIES--by Thirty and One authors--Appleton ($2.50). A collection of short stories by Wells, Bennett, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Rebecca West, A. E. Coppard, Stacy Au-monier, Quiller-Couch and other English writers. Short story addicts may rave at the omission of this or that personal favorite, but, on the whole, the collection strikes a high average and at the estimated price of 8$ per story should prove a boon to the economical book-buyer who wants his money's worth in both quantity and quality.

FEET OF CLAY--Margaretta Tuttle-- Little Brown ($2.00). The wicked rich, not too wicked to be somewhat plausible. The industrious and noble poor, who suffer the minor scorns of life with equanimity and are always rewarded with limousines in the last chapter. The lovestory of a girl who tastes both riches and poverty, and, by heroically choosing Good Hard Work instead of Idle Luxury, eventually manages to eat her cake and have it too. Mrs. Tuttle has so shrewdly mixed reality and bunk, plausibility and blatant theatrics in Feet of Clay that her success as a popular fiction-writer of the Gene Stratton-Porter school seems assured. Marvelous pap for mental 14-year olds.