The Stars in their Courses (UNWIN) is not, as you might possibly suppose, a work of theatrical history, but just the latest volume in that admirable series, the First Novel Library.  While I am not claiming for it any startling pre-eminence, it is at least a story of more than ordinary promise, and one that easily contrived to hold my interest.  This is, perhaps, the more odd, since Miss HILDA M. SHARP has apparently of deliberate intent called in every one of the three conventions that all good young novelists are bidden to avoid—­the long-nourished revenge, the missing will, and the super-quixotic self-sacrifice.  Naturally the last is the worst.  Thus when old Mr. Yardley (who had, I fancy, more than a touch of the melodramatic habits of the late Mr. Dombey) planned to revenge himself upon a faithless wife by bringing up his and her son with extravagant tastes, and leaving him penniless, I winced but endured.  When, repenting of such inhuman intentions, he revoked them by a will, carefully placed, for subsequent discovery, between the pages of a put-away book, I still held an undaunted course.  But, when Patrick, the disinherited spendthrift, took upon himself, for the thinnest reason, all the blame of his supplanter’s evil doing and kept up this idiotic fraud till the girl of his heart, and indeed everyone who cared for him, turned their backs in disdain, then I confess to having felt that Miss SHARP was trying my forbearance too high.  But even so the fact that I could not throw the book down unfinished seems to show that whoever selects Mr. UNWIN’S debutantes has spotted another winner.  If, in short, Miss SHARP will forget all the novels she may ever have read, and choose for her next story something a little nearer to life, I believe the result may be remarkable.

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Nursing Adventures, with its sub-title, A F.A.N.Y. in France, is a notable addition to the series of War-literature which is bringing grist to Messrs. HEINEMANN’S windmill.  F.A.N.Y., in case it has you puzzled, means First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.  Starting from one woman this corps now has over fifty members working in the zone of the armies, and I shall believe that no one can read of their efficiency and courage without genuine admiration.  This is not an official account of the F.A.N.Y.  Corps—­that is to come when the Hun is beaten—­but the author has told enough to convince us of the sound work that has been and is being done by these brave and gentle-hearted women.  Fortunately she has the gift of selection, in spite of a rather breathless style, which however goes excellently well with a narrative full of excitement and danger.  Here too once more a fine tribute is paid to the incorrigible courage of the Allies in face of an enemy that has forgotten the elementary rules of humanity.

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