In _A Merchant Fleet at War_ (CASSELL) it takes nearly a hundred pictures to illustrate the fighting effort and experiences of the Cunard Steamship Company. Quite a lot of them are from snap-shot photographs actually taken while in action with submarines, and where through an unfortunate oversight these have not been available someone with vivid brush and imagination has done wonders to fill the gap. Certainly such a subject as the passing of the _Lusitania_, her decks still packed though her great bulk is three-quarters gone, the sea crowded with boats and, presumably, drowning Englishmen, is perhaps a little poignant to be handled in this fashion; but no one can object to seeing a U-boat nose-diving at the instance of S.S. _Phrygia_, or another being messed up by a shell from the _Valeria_; while the historic fight between _Carmania_, in Prussian blue, and _Cap Trafalgar_, mostly crimson, competes for lurid splendour with the _Mauretania_ in "dazzle" costume, staged with a sky to match. Incidentally Mr. ARCHIBALD HURD has acted as showman for the collection. One might have found his exposition rather more substantial but for Sir JULIAN CORBETT'S first volume of _Naval Operations_, which has set an uncomfortably high standard in sea history. Frankly, the deeds of the men of our merchant fleets, of the Cunarders no less than others, were so magnificent that a book to be worthy of them must be in itself as modest and unpretentious as they were. This book is not. * * * * * _The Tall Villa_ (COLLINS), by "LUCAS MALET," has a strange theme--no less than the deliberate wooing, by a sensitive unhappy woman, of a more unhappy ghost. _Lord Oxley_ had lived in this odd villa on Primrose Hill a hundred years ago with a noted stage beauty who had finally jilted him. One of his descendants, _Frances Copley_, banished from Grosvenor Square by her husband's financial failure and conscious of the growing rift between them, detaches herself more and more from the world of sense till she is--well, till she is in just the right mood for seeing ghosts. First it is a mere shadow that stands by her piano; next a faceless figure, exquisitely dressed, sits brooding in her chair; then she hears a pistol shot; later--but this will spoil your entertainment. I cannot say I was quite convinced, but I certainly was held to the end by a tale very skilfully, almost too carefully, told, and by the cleverness of the four portraits-- _Frances_ herself, the adorable _Lady Lucia_ her cousin, _Charlie Montagu_ the passionate bounder, and, a little less definite, _Morris Copley_ the stockbroking husband. * * * * *