The author deals with the early years of a boy's life. The action of the story, opening abroad, and then moving to London and to English country houses, takes place in the seventies. The story is almost as much the story of David's mother as of David himself, and shows, against a background of the manners of the time, the consequences of a breaking away from the established order. How, under the shadow, David's childhood is yet almost wholly happy, and how on the threshold of manhood he is left ready--his heart's desire in view--to face life in earnest and to make a new name for himself in his own way, these pages tell. =THE KENNEDY PEOPLE. By W. Pett Ridge,= Author of 'The Happy Recruit.' The author is, in this novel, still faithful to London, but he sets out here to till something like fresh ground. A description is given of three generations of a family, and particulars are conveyed of the kind of chart that represented their advances and their retreats. The story is told in Mr. Pett Ridge's lively and characteristic manner. =Mr. GREX OF MONTE CARLO. By E. Phillips Oppenheim,= Author of 'Master of Men.' Mr. Oppenheim has never written a more absorbing story than this one, in which an adventurous young American first falls in love, then into trouble, and becomes a part of events that are making history. In Monte Carlo three men skilled in international intrigue meet in secret conference; two Ministers of foreign affairs and a Grand Duke plan to make over the map of Europe, while a diplomat representing a fourth great world-power, aided by skilled secret-service men, aims to thwart their endeavours. Then--enter the American. How young Richard Lane, wealthy and used to having his own way, fell in love with mysterious Mr. Grex's daughter, how he was not discouraged even when he found out what an important personage Mr. Grex really was, how he took a hand in events and caused an upset, is told in a thrilling love story that lays bare the methods of modern international diplomatists and incidentally conveys a warning to America to arm herself against the possibilities of war. =THE EVIL DAY. By Lady Troubridge.= In this book Lady Troubridge abandons for the first time the study of the very young girl, to give us one of a woman of forty, who, until the story opens, has led a quiet, retired and domestic existence. Circumstances, however, bring the heroine face to face with modern life and its developments in their most vivid form, and she does not pass through the experience altogether unscathed. =THE SECRET SON. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney.= Mrs. Henry Dudeney's new novel is a delightful story of the Sussex Downs. Its types and characters are rustic, and in it comedy and tragedy are skilfully mingled by this most accomplished writer. The theme of the book is the relation between mother and son, and the reader passes to the close of a very human story with a most absorbing interest.