Fiction: Recent Books: Feb. 7, 1938

Bow DOWN TO WOOD AND STONE—Josephine Lawrence—Little, Brown ($2.50). The story of three female martyr complexes—a possessive mother, an old-maid office worker, a good wife—who reap the ingratitude their selfish self-sacrifice deserves; by the author of If I Have Four Apples.

MONPTI — Gabor Vaszary — Knopf ($2.50). Reminiscent of the early Knut Hamsun, the Paris romance of a poor Hungarian student and an ingenuous coquette. For its full laugh-&-cry flavor, add Chopin accompaniment.

THE FATE OF THE GROSVENOR—Jonathan Lee—Covid-Friede ($2.75). A good story, lamely told, describing the wreck in 1782 of an Indiaman off the east coast of Africa, the harrowing 117-day march in which eight of the 100-odd survivors fought their way to the Cape.

NonFiction

BEYOND HORIZONS — Lincoln Ellsworth —Doubleday, Doran ($3.50). Unaffected autobiography of the 57-year-old Polar explorer, mainly concerned with his Arctic and Antarctic experiences of the last two decades, of which the greatest hardship was his 1926 Arctic flight with Amundsen, matched only by the hardships of dealing with his rich father.

IN 1937—A. C. Eurich & E. C. Wilson —Holt ($2.50). Concise, authoritative, 523-page digest of 1937-8 complex world news—in politics, government, crime, science, religion, art, literature, cinema—by the Test-Makers of TIME. Illustrated.

Two WARS AND MORE TO COME—Herbert L. Matthews — Carrick & Evans ($2.50). Direct, unphilosophical reporting by one of the ablest New York Times correspondents, on the Italian campaign in Ethiopia and the siege of Madrid. The eleven chapters on Ethiopia make the Italian advance more of a pushover than U. S. readers would have guessed; the twelve Spanish chapters, written from the Loyalist side, give a confused account of political developments, a vivid description of the battle of Brihuega, which Matthews considers one of the most decisive in history.

PROMETHEUS AND THE BOLSHEVIKS—John Lehmann—Knopf ($3.75) Impressionistic travel book on semitropical Russian Georgia, with emphasis on its writers, painters, the Marjhanishvili Theatre, together with random flashbacks of Georgia’s turbulent history, a biographical sketch of its most famous native son, Stalin.