_Tents of a Night_ (Smith, Elder) is a quite ordinary story, about entirely commonplace persons, which has however an original twist in it. I never met a story that conveyed so vividly the nastiness of a summer holiday that isn't nice. The holiday was in Brittany, just the common round, Cherbourg, Coutances, Mont St. Michel, and the rest of it; and the holiday-makers were _Mr._ and _Mrs. Hepburn_, their niece _Anne_, and a rather pleasant flapper named _Barbara_ whom they had taken in charge. _Anne_ is the heroine and central character of the holiday; and certainly whatever discomforts it contained she seems to have done her successful best to add to. "This is a beastly place!" was her written comment upon St. Michel; and it was typical of her attitude throughout. Of course the real trouble with _Anne_ was something deeper than drains or crowded hotels or the smell of too many omelettes: she was in love. Apparently she was more or less in love with two men, _Dragotin Voinovich_ (whose name was a constant worry to _Anne's_ aunt, and I am bound to say that I share her feelings about it) and _Jimmy Fordyce_, a pleasant young Englishman who pulls the girls out of quicksands and makes himself generally agreeable. In the end, however--but on second thoughts the end, emotionally speaking, of _Anne_ is just what I shall not tell you, as it is precisely the thing that redeems the book from being commonplace. This you will enjoy; and also those remarkably real descriptions of various plage-hotels in August, the noise, the crowds, the long hot meals, the sunshine and constant wind, the sand on the staircase, and the general atmosphere of wet bathing-gowns--all these are a luxurious delight to read about in a comfortable English room. Miss Mary Findlater evidently knows them. * * * * *