e Swords_, by Tristram Tupper, is a gallant
representative of those novels which we are beginning to get in the
inevitable reaction from such realism as _Main Street_ and _Moon-Calf_, a
romantic story of age and youth, of love and hate, of bitter unyielding
hardness, and of melting pity and tenderness. It begins with the Robin,
age seven, with burnished curls, viewing with awestruck delight five
polished swords against the shining dark wall in Colonial House, where she
had gone to deliver the Colonel's boots! She forgot the boots. She lifted
two of the swords from the wall, crossed them on the floor and danced the
sword dance of Scotland. From the doorway a white-haired old figure
watched with narrowed eyes and tightened mouth. Then the storm broke....

_The House of Five Swords_ is Mr. Tupper's first novel. A native of
Virginia, he has done newspaper work, has tramped a good deal and was
fooling with the study of law when American troops were ordered to the
Mexican border. After that experience he went overseas. On his return from
the war, he tried writing and met with rapid success.

=iii=

Readers of Baroness Orczy's novels will welcome _Nicolette_.

This is essentially a love story, with the scene laid in the mountains of
Provence in the early days of the Restoration of King Louis XVIII to the
throne of France. An ancient half-ruined chateau perches among dwarf
olives and mimosa, orange and lemon groves. There is a vivid contrast
between the prosperity of Jaume Deydier, a rich peasant-proprietor, and
the grinding poverty of the proud and ancient family of de Ventadour,
whose last scion, Bertrand, goes to seek fortune in Paris and there
becomes affianced to a wealthy and beautiful heiress. Nicolette, the
daughter of Jaume Deydier, whose ancestor had been a lackey in the service
of the Comte de Ventadour, is passionately in love with Bertrand, but a
bitter feud keeps the lovers for long apart.

There will be a new novel this autumn, _Ann and Her Mother_, by O.
Douglas, whose _Penny Plain_ gave great pleasure to its readers. "Penny
plain," if you remember, was the way Jean described the lot of herself and
her brothers whom she mothered in the Scottish cottage; but matters were
somewhat changed when romance crossed the threshold in the person of the
Honourable Pamela and a bitter old millionaire who came to claim the house
as his own.

_Ann and Her Mother_ is the story of a Scotch family as seen through the
eyes o