Our moorland novelists are of two schools. One of them depicts the dwellers on these heights as a superior race, using a vocabulary half Biblical, half minor-poetic, in which to express the most exalted sentiments; the other draws a picture of upland domesticity comparable to that found in a cage of hyenas. Mr. HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, though he is too skilled an artist to overdo the colouring, inclines (I am bound to say) so much towards the former method that I confess to an uneasy doubt, at times, whether any human families could maintain existence on the same plane of nobility as, for example, the _Holts_ in his latest romance, _Lonesome Heights_ (WARD, LOCK). These _Holts_ were a race of farmer-squires, and in the book you see their development through two generations: the masterful old man and his twin sons. This is all the tale; a simple enough record, but full of the dignity and beauty which make the reading of any story by this author a refreshment to irritated nerves. Towards the end some space is devoted to the fight to abolish child-labour in the dale mills; there is also a scandal, and the fastening of blame upon the wrong brother; no very great matter. It is for such scenes as that of the death of old _Holt_, and his last words to the horse that has thrown him, that _Lonesome Heights_ will earn its place on your library list. * * * * * _The Dice of the Gods_ (HEATH, CRANTON) is not, as the title suggests, something rather thrilling in the way of romantic fiction, but one of those dispassionate novels in which the author, through the medium of his puppets, gently scourges the follies of society. _William van der Beck_, whose fictional house of clay very obviously clothes the spiritual essence of the author, Mr. LUCIAN DE ZILWA, returns to his native Colombo with a liberal education, to find that the life and thought of the strange Indo-European bourgeoisie to which he belongs by birth present no alluring features. In point of fact the ambitions and hypocrisies, pretences and prejudices of the Cingalese "burgher" with the tell-tale finger-nails are merely those of Bristol or Amsterdam evolved under Colonial conditions. _Jack van der Beck_, for example, the pompous medical ass with a flourishing practice among the local nabobs, can be found in every provincial town in Europe. _The Dice of the Gods_ has no plot worthy of the name, but Mr. DE ZILWA has both satire and philosophy at his command, and a flair for atmosphere. His scenery and "props" too will be new even to the most hardened novel-reader. He paints a vivid Oriental background with which the semi-Western civilization of his characters alternately blends and contrasts rather effectively. * * * * *