THE MESSENGER is a mystery and love story told with literary skill by Elizabeth Robins, author of "Come and Find Me." The story revolves about an amazingly clever spy who serves in an English family as a governess. Scotland Yard detectives are on the case, but the girl matches skill and daring with them to the last. The love theme concerns a beautiful American girl, who is an angel of mercy but who gets things mixed considerably because of her quick and loyal sympathies. (Century.)

SHERRY unfolds a sinister mystery such as George Barr McCutcheon, author of "Graustark," knows so well how to handle and tells at the same time a pleasing love story. The hero. Sherry of the title. has wasted a legacy. and homeless and penniless sets himself the task of rebuilding his shattered strength and reestablishing his self-esteem. Fortunately a warm-hearted girls appears on the scene just in time to make this effort seem really worth while. Sherry is made of excellent stuff tho his former conduct belies him. He isn't ashamed to begin as a day laborer until the opportunity of a secretaryship to a strange old miser offers itself. In the grim background of this old man's house stalks the mystery to which Sherry finally finds the solution. (Dodd, Mead.)

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THE GREATER GLORY is called a novel of a New England town. It might have been called the story of a small town newspaper or of a New England woman. The fortunes of the appealing young heroine and her young husband are inextricably interwoven those of an almost human old-time newspaper. William Dudley Pelley has made one of the staff of the old daily the chronicler of the brave fight that the heroine puts up against poverty. Mary Purse sees youth and worldly success go by, but the "greater glory" comes to her in the possession of her six fine sons. The very human types of the story make a general appeal. To readers who have seen New England towns change as this Vermont community does, the book has a special interest. (Little, B.)

THE SEA BRIDE. "All the Brothers Were Valiant," won laurels for its author, Ben Ames Williams, as a novelist of the sea. His new story is again of the sea, having to do with the stirring events of a whaling voyage. The vessel on which the drama is enacted is com. manded by a hard-hearted, unprincipled tyrant who bullies the crew as well as his wife. To the rescue, however, comes an honest and fearless young sailor who has been picked up by the ship on an island. And it is he who finds a solution to the situation which is equally satisfactory to the reader and to the captain's bride. (Macmillan.)

LIGHT (CLARTE) is the latest novel of the French author, Henri Barbusse, whose "Under Fire" was so widely discussed both in this country and abroad. Its story is told in the first person by a French workman. Simon Paulin, a clerk in a huge factory in a provin

cial town. It recounts his life as a young man, his marriage, his frugal attempts to better his position, and gives such a picture of the customs, manners, hopes, prospects and mental and spiritual outlook of the ordinary citizen as "Under Fire" gave of the life of the French poilu in the trenches in the early months of the war. He is approaching middle life when the war breaks out and, almost be fore he knows what has happened, he is fighting. Half or more of the story is devoted to his experiences at the front. All this account is less concerned with the physical side of the experience than it is with the mental and spiritual change which gradually takes place in this man and in many of his mates. There are many conversations in which the ideas of 80cialism and of world revolution are thrashed out among the men and finally Monsieur Simon Paulin, going back to his home on convalescent leave, emerges into what he believes to be the "light" which is the truth about the relation of the individual to society, and about civilization and nationalism and the organiza tion of the world. (Dutton.)

THE BLACK DROP is the spiritual and mental reaction of a normal family to a streak of badness in one of its members. In a family. all of whose members are cultivated, kindly. and loyal there is one, perhaps the strongest personality in ability and force, who is unprincipled, ambitious for money and station and a dangerous member of society. It is he who precipitates the problem of this latest novel of Alice Brown's. His scheming gives rise to a series of dramatic incidents which lead inevitably to a climax involving a brother, a father and mother, a wife and grandfather. The story grows in the author's characteristic style thru the use of minute and useful detail. The whole is a careful psychological study. (Macmillan.)

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM. A new book in Samuel Merwin's Henry Calverly suite will always be a joy to the friends this hero has made in the author's two previous books, and "Tempermental Henry" "Henry is Twenty." The latest canto takes up the history of that singularly appealing young genius at the very nadir of his career-his young wife tragically dead, himself a branded man beginning again under an assumed name, with his magic gift, his one weapon against the world, seemingly gone. Against a background of newspaper life in a mid-western city, the figure of the thin, sensitive, sombre youth. is cut, sharp as a silhouette. Our old friend Henry comes to us with a new and poignant appeal. He has developed from the boy you couldn't help liking into the man you couldn't help loving. A good fight is always inspiring. and Henry fights not only the dead past but a very living present in the shape of a corrupt political machine and a mayor of Stygian depravity. Here is fighting for those who love a good fight-and for the more romantically inclined, not a little of "the fever called love." (Bobbs-Merrill.)